The last two weeks have been given over to overoptimistic outpourings of happiness. Here is the grumpy note I put out on April Fool’s Day as the aforementioned came out skipping into the park, hope reliably triumphing over experience:

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?

The Constitutional Court ruling against Jacob Zuma yesterday is another significant blow to his credibility and will reflect negatively on the ANC. However he (Zuma) remains in control of his party (even if slightly weakened) and with a significant degree of electoral popularity, especially in rural areas and KwaZulu-Natal. For now I maintain the position that he is most likely not to be recalled before his terms of office ends in 2017 (as ANC President) and 2019 (as country President) – although a recall remains a reasonable possibility. I outline the arguments for and against this view.

Does Jacob Zuma face a recall?

A flurry of speculation about a possible recall of Jacob Zuma has followed the ruling against him and the National Assembly by the Constitutional Court yesterday.

So what?

The Financial Times yesterday pointed out in an article sub-headed “Real and Ibovespa[1] shine as president’s prospects darken” that “Brazil’s left-leaning president, Dilma Rousseff, probably will not miss when she leaves office … the tendency of markets to loudly applaud her every misfortune” – FT online on March 31 2016 at 08h35.

A similar dynamic is emerging around the apparent fortunes of Jacob Zuma – at least since his unexpected and unexplained firing of widely respected Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene on 09/12/2015.

So will Zuma be recalled before his terms of office expire?

As an ‘uncertain future event’ question, I am obliged not to give a ‘yes or no’ answer – after all, how can I know?

In the normal course of events Jacob Zuma would be replaced at the ANC’s National Conference in 2017 (probably in December of that year), and as country President after national elections in 2019.

However the damaging scandals that are accumulating around him – the Nkandla scandal and now the humiliating ConCourt ruling, his raid on the National Treasury that underlay his firing of Nene, the widespread criticism of his apparently crony relationship with the Gupta family businesses, the serious deterioration of the State Owned Enterprises and other areas of the state, partly as a result of corruption that directly implicates his (Zuma’s) patronage networks – must in turn be damaging his ANC party.

AGAINST RECALL

The ANC’s political history will favour an instinctive taking of a protective stance towards its leader and attempting to present a united external front.

The ANC is facing a major electoral challenge in national municipal elections in (probably) August this year. It would be extremely difficult for the party to deal with the recall of a still popular and powerful (however bizarre that might seem) president and fight an election at the same time.

The ANC was badly damaged and riven after the recall of Thabo Mbeki by the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in September 2008 and is likely to be cautious about undergoing a similar process against Zuma.

Zuma remains powerful within the ANC, having bound the majority of members of the NEC and many powerful provincial leaders into loyalty networks based primarily on patronage and the threat of the loss thereof. His power is slipping but my guestimate is that support is still comfortably above the 50% mark.

Zuma remains popular in large sections of the electorate, particularly in the majority province of KwaZulu-Natal and in most rural areas. He has lost significant support in urban areas and amongst the emerging black middle-classes, but this ‘loss’ is still a minority of the ANC’s electorate.

The ConCourt ruling essentially affirmed something Zuma’s counsel had already admitted to in the original hearing on Tuesday 9th of February and was surprising primarily for its clarity and depth, its additional criticism of the National Assembly for not holding Zuma to account and its clear list of corrective measures to be taken. This is to say it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the markets or the public.

If Jacob Zuma loses control of the ANC and of the succession process the chances of him becoming swamped by serious corruption allegations after his term of offices ends increases significantly. His and his cronies’ backs are to the wall and they will fight vigorously – and with proven skill – to prevent a loss of control of the ANC.

FOR RECALL

Jacob Zuma has brought much scandal to the Presidency that we believe has damaged the party’s support – although not yet to a degree that puts the ANC in danger of getting below 50% in a national election. (Again a thumbsuck – Ed.)

The growing scandals have finally led to the emergence of an internal opposition (internal to the ruling ANC) that showed itself with Jacob Zuma being forced into an almost immediate recall of Des van Rooyen as the replacement finance minister after the Nene firing and the appointment of a previous finance minister, Pravin Gordhan. Since then significant cracks have begun appearing in Zuma’s previously impervious hold on the party, particularly around his apparently corrupt relationship with the Gupta family, whereby he may have handed his exclusive obligation to appoint cabinet ministers to the Gupta brothers. Again, these are setbacks, but have not yet left Zuma isolated. (A lot has happened since I wrote that … amazing that it was only 14 days ago).

If the ANC does particularly badly in the coming municipal elections it is likely that pressure for some kind of recall will increase in the party.

As Zuma moves closer to the end of his term – and the end of his ability to dispense patronage – it is likely that more distasteful aspects of his support will begin to dissipate, leaving him more vulnerable to an early recall.

On balance …

I think it is most likely that Jacob Zuma serves out his full term of office in both the ANC and the country. Additionally I think it is most likely that as we move closer to the end of his terms of office he will agree to take a step back and play more of a ceremonial role – probably in exchange for some form of promise of immunity. (We are not confident that such a “promise” has any value, but will examine this in later posts – Ed).

A recall is not impossible – or a resignation due to ill health, for example – but I consider this a lower probability than the alternative. It is important to point out I am not ‘married’ to this view and we will change it if and when circumstances and the facts change.

Lame duck – or at least limping slightly

What is clear, and should be considered good news, is that Zuma and his allies are fully taken up with fighting a defensive action. This significantly will lower their confidence and ability to engage in untoward activity with regard to state expenditure, also in the expenditure of State Owned Enterprises, or in undertaking any major cabinet reshuffles to achieve these ends. This may also apply to the proposed nuclear programme.

For example any form of follow-through on the December 2015 raid on the National Treasury or attempts to undermine Pravin Gordhan in his role as National Treasurer are likely to retreat (or at least be deprioritised) in the agenda of the Zuma clan and its business allies.

Thus the impunity with which Zuma and his allies have acted in ransacking aspects of the state is collapsing through hubris and overreach. His support is, as I have argued previously, brittle: hard, unyielding but likely to shatter when it breaks.

You might be surprised at how carefully some people who’ve never set foot on these shores, people who are mostly blindingly clever at maths and informed to a scarily deep level about our politics and history and whose job includes trading our currency and bonds, have asked me that headline question in the last week.

I have a stock answer that is true to myself but provides cold comfort to those whose fingers must hit one or other button to ‘short‘ SA relative to Russia, or vice versa, or Turkey or Brazil or the Philippines or offer up a financial instrument more exotic than I, for one, can understand, an indecipherable instrument that hedges all the angles but still takes a bet that has within its algorithms a call as to whether South Africa sucks completely or sucks less than the market has priced.

That answer begins: “well it’s complicated …”

Zuma as a president and the various cabals and gangsters that have kept him in place have had free policy and patronage range since 2008.

Nhlanhla Nene’s axing was the worst and most damaging – and exposing – decision Zuma and his cronies have taken since Zuma was elected ANC president in late 2007 (and I would include Mbeki’s recall in that comparison.)

Nene’s summary and unexplained axing and Van Rooyen’s appointment showed astonishing depths of either ignorance, cronyism or hubris – but I am tending towards ignorance, seasoned by the other two.

Only an extremely ignorant man, advised by people whose basic stupidity or grandiosity (undoubtedly a perfect combination of the two ) could have shat on the doorstep of global capital markets, of the people, countries and institutions that lend us money, those who own our banks and those who rate the quality of our government debt – and thought they could walk away from their malodorous mess.

We hear all this blather in ANC discussion documents about the crisis of capitalism, the unstable ‘casino economy’ and the glorious rise of China and Russia (India is occasionally mentioned) and this self-serving internal jabbering has left Zuma surrounded by coterie of people who think sentiment and a rain of Chinese dollars has relieved us of the brutal disciplines of global capital markets? Are these not lessons we learned in 1994 – 1996?

What? China will lend/give us money to bail us out as our currency crashes and the bond yields spike? Dream on morons. The markets aren’t everything you know, I hear him bleat, and this is what I have learned, Zuma proudly asserts, from my week at Focac and the visit of Premier Zi Jinping, my new best friend. The rise of China means ‘western’ markets have lost their power to take away our sovereignty.” Yay! Lets fire that neo-liberal sell-out Nene and get along with the business of taking back what is ours.

… and the awful retribution of the implacable, cold and thoughtless ‘markets’ crushed us under its heel, without even noticing.

Okay so a group of ANC leaders managed to slap him (Zuma) and his handlers down and have appointed Gordhan (again) who is going to deliver up some brutal lessons to this crew (I cannot wait!) … you will see in previous posts why I think that Gordhan’s appointment is not only a good idea, but leaves us in a position even better (politically) than when Zuma fired Nene (although it is a close call) – that is the answer I finally give to those who ask the question in the first paragraph … but only after long and probably boring but stern admonishments that complex systems do not yield up easy, dualistic answers.

But I want you to think about our core political leadership … or rather think about what they think about. Who are they? I assume it’s Zuma and his myriad sons and daughters and cousins and wives, it’s obviously the Guptas, the increasingly awful Lindiwe Zulu and others scattered about the differentially abled ANC Youth League, the Woman’s League and the Premier League with Ace Magashule neck and neck with Zulu in the running dog, protect-the-President-at-all-costs, Joseph Goebbels’ cup.

Jacob Zuma gave a perfect explanation (in terms of his logic) and defence of why he axed Nene in the speech he gave after the announcement. Rian Malan, journalist and author, nailed the problem by closely examining the unscripted words Zuma delivered after announcing that Nene was out and Van Rooyen was in.

You must read Malan’s article (here) but the long and the short of it is Zuma said “I am rebelling against (the idea that) what determines the value of a commodity is the law of supply and demand … The value of a commodity is the labour time taken in production …”

Do you know what that means? Do you realise how dire the consequences that flow from this being the view of our President?

In the intellectual vacuum that Zuma and whatever advisers he used when he fired Nene and appointed Van Rooyen there could only have been a complete absence of the knowledge that most of those who lend us money, buy our financial equities or trade our currency base their decisions on the reliability, predictability and respect of the Minister of Finance. It doesn’t matter if the traders and fund-managers are wrong or right in using this Cabinet Minister as the touchstone of policy credibility, it only matters that they do and the actions and inactions of the head of the National Treasury are scrutinised and combed with ruthless thoroughness by those who sell or buy our currency or debt (and in this case our bank’s equity as well).

We have a President surrounded by a coterie of what I am tempted to describe as imbeciles – and I don’t mean the Cabinet. Do they really think that (the interrupted) rise of China will free us from the dictates of markets? Our debt, equity and currency are traded on markets where prices are set by how many buyers or sellers there are, not some sentimental, half baked understanding of Marxist theories from the mid-to-late 1800s. When those markets ‘think’ the politicians are clearing obstacles (Nene) so they (those politicians) and their clients can loot the public purse they (the traders) will unsentimentally sell the financial instruments that are the backbone of our economy and we will crumble. And this time we came that close.

We have a steely new Finance Minister who I believe has more reason than ever to stand up to the ignorant and incoherent policy coming from the centre – although growth and our place in the world will make his job intolerably hard.

We have seen that the centre can be countermanded when its decisions are so bad that they could have a real chance of pushing the country into penury.

However the centre is still the centre, and it is still strong and dominant in the ruling party anyway. We are not home and free while Jacob Zuma occupies the driving seat. It doesn’t really matter if he is a crook or a fool -he has shown unequivocally poor judgement, and this looms over us as an ever present risk.

For those who were tortured by my somnolently incoherent post last night, here is the follow up. Hopefully a little clearer.

The flip-flops around the Minister of Finance leave Jacob Zuma looking weak and vulnerable. There are grounds to begin questioning whether he will see out his full term.

The appointment of Pravin Gordhan is a victory on a number of different fronts and should be celebrated.

We can expect the process of fiscal consolidation to continue on track.

It really is the season to be jolly.

Gordhan’s shock reappointment as Finance Minister – positive

Jacob Zuma fired the increasingly widely respected Minister of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene, on Wednesday December the 9th. He gave no reasons but there had already been wide speculation that:

Nene decisively blocked a nonsense SAA deal to lease some Airbus planes upon which Zuma associate SAA board chair Dudu Myeni had set her sights;

That Nene was pushing important investigations into corruption or mismanagement at SABC that were getting uncomfortably close to Zuma’s close personal friend Hlaudi Motsoeneng and

Most importantly Nene was blocking the (approximately) ZAR1-trillion nuclear deal that was the pet project of Jacob Zuma and his close business associates the Guptas – who had appeared to prepare for the deal by investing heavily through Oakbay investments in several uranium mines

Almost immediately the ZAR tanked, the bond yields spiked and everyone with a voice screamed blue murder at the irrationality of the axing.

Zuma then, perhaps more mysteriously, appointed the relatively unknown and unqualified David Van Rooyen to the post, despite there being many highly qualified candidates available (South Africa has made a point of putting its highest quality ministers into the National Treasury position.) The widespread assumption was that Nene was being replaced by someone who would be more compliant to the President’s wishes, and more importantly, to the wishes of those who are in business with the President.

Then …

Then, even more shockingly, late last night (13/12/2015) Jacob Zuma did an about turn, dropped Van Rooyen and reappointed Minister of Co-Operative Governance, Pravin Gordhan, as Finance Minister (a post he – Gordhan – held prior to Nene’s appointment 18 Months ago.)

Jacob Zuma has had his wings closely clipped – which is a good thing

The decision to axe Nene bordered on the criminal but most analysts thought that Zuma could get away with anything he wanted within the ANC – even as the ANC lost support amongst the electorate. Well it appears they were wrong. A powerful enough group of leaders have got together, sat Zuma down and forced him to make a humiliating climb down. The financial market response might have helped and the bleating of the opposition and the press would have given some support, but the ANC prides itself of being impervious to the shallow swings of public opinion (which is no bad thing). This was an internal leadership revolt against Zuma, the Holy Grail that many had been hoping for as the country went from the healthy constitutional democracy of 2007 to this damaged (in many of its most important institutions) country, almost overwhelmed by rent-seeking and corruption.

We out here in the public realm don’t know anything for sure, except Zuma was given a ‘warm klap’ (warm slap – colloquial Afrikaans) and we can hope that this might begin the unravelling of his negative influence on the country and its politics. The admonishment and humiliating climb-down must have been caused by ANC heavyweights who have finally found their voice and power enough to put Zuma in his place.

Pravin Gordhan will be a better Minister of Finance – even than he was before

Gordhan has all the credentials and had a close to faultless term as head of the National Treasury. (If memory serves, like all heads of the NT his slips concerned the public wage sector bill and desperate attempts to avoid public sector strikes.) His only weak point is he tends to run an unhappy office … it was widely speculated that the staff at the National Treasury were unhappy with his dictatorial style of leadership. This we can live with.

Of interest is that since Gordhan had left the Treasury a witch hunt has been conducted in Gordhan’s previous posting, the South African Revenue Service, SARS. The witch hunt has been against an alleged “rogue spy unit”. The fact is the special investigation units, established by Trevor Manuel and Pravin Gordhan were an essential part of investigating complicated tax avoidance and fraud cases, especially those involving heads of large criminal networks and powerful politicians. It is a small step to see who might have been the obvious targets of the special investigative units. And an even smaller step to see why and who has stimulated the witch hunts and slander against the loyal SARS investigators involved in these units – calling them rogues and criminals, and ensuring their dismissal or buyout.

Thus this is going to be a Finance Minister that nobody is going to push around – especially not Jacob Zuma and his cronies – against whom Gordhan has good reason to feel ill-disposed. It’s a win-win.

My only faint worry is I am not sure of Gordhan’s attitude to the nuclear programme. I am sure he will not do anything to threaten the process of fiscal consolidation, but as an old style ANC securocrat he might have an over-attachment to nuclear power (an affliction of those who grew up in the ANC in the 70’s mostly because of the USSR’s warm embrace of that technology).

Business Day this morning published an article suggesting that Nhlanhla Nene was on the verge of being shuffled out of his Minister of Finance position to some face-saving backwater.

I wrote early last week in a client note: “It is widely held that the National Treasury and Minister Nhlanhla Nene have come under hostile pressure for investigating close Zuma allies and an axe in the form a threatened Cabinet shuffle hangs over Nene’s head to keep him compliant with Zuma’s own spending priorities and plans for SOE’s and nuclear power roll-out (to which Nene is widely believed to be opposed in its current ZAR1-trillion form).”

However I have repeated to several of my clients that I believe that while Zuma might axe Nene is might be a step too far, the moment the great leader overestimates his greatness and fails to understand his Ozymandian limitations.

Nene is the first black African Minister of Finance and he is at least as steely and technically competent as any of his post 1994 predecessors. Last week be brought the meat-clever down on the plan of SAA board chair Dudu Myeni (widely suggested to be an intimate of Jacob Zuma) to place a mock-up company in an already done leasing deal between the national carrier and Airbus. The company would have been nothing other than a rent extraction tool – and added hugely to the costs of the deal. Myeni’s reprehensible argument was that it was all for the purpose of transformation – proving that the political elite uses the practice to loot the SOE budgets as much as it ever does to promote real BEE.

Nene has also been going after the SABC’s Motsoeneng (another person who brags widely about his relationship with the President and his untouchable status) and he (Nene) has been widely assessed to be dragging his heals on Jacob Zuma’s pet nuclear deal that in its current form would beggar the country and state finance for many years to come.

So Nene has apparently got in Zuma’s face and he is facing the axe – according to various stories including the one linked above.

When Nene was first appointed on May 24 2014 I expressed concern about his seniority in the party and questioned whether he would be able to stand up to the fiscal pressures that would be placed on him – especially in relation to his predecessors in the position and especially in our declining growth environment.

I was wrong – if anything Nene has been both stronger and more tactical in his attempts to meet the increasingly difficult targets of fiscal consolidation – given the endlessly lower levels of growth. The rating agencies, those who grade South African government debt and have recently moved us closer to non-investment grade (i.e., junk) have come to rely on the dependability of the head of the National Treasury. We have a tradition of putting some of our best ministers in the position and Nene has risen to the challenge.

The Business Day story quoted above (which might be rubbish, but chimes with several of our initial views) suggests that some “malleable” nobody by the name of Des van Rooyen from the Parliament’s finance committee could replace Nene (the closest information I could find on a web search for this character was this smarmy speech on the ANC website).

I have no idea if this is true, but have concluded elsewhere for a range of reasons and from a range of sources that Nene is vulnerable and that ‘an axe hovers over his neck’ because he has stood up to Zuma.

If Zuma gets rid of Nene, because the head of the NT has offended Zuma’s friends and he is showing opposition to Zuma’s nuclear retirement plan or legacy project he (Zuma) would be making a grave mistake – a mistake leaders who have come to overestimate their power often make.

Axing Nene will be read by the capital markets and rating agencies in exactly the terms I have described above – Nene has been exemplary in his job except when forced to concede to political pressure from the top – and even then he has skilfully manoeuvred to lessen the damage.

If Nene is axed I will be unsurprised to see us downgraded to junk by the end of 2016.

I will also be unsurprised to see political shifts against the leader (Zuma) who has finally overstepped the mark, who has heaped damage upon damage on the South African political economy, especially as regards to its reputation for probity, but who has especially damaged the reputation of the ANC.

I see from the Business Day story that the rumour is the Guptas “let the cat out of the bag” (read “announced”) the impending Cabinet reshuffle. Excuse me! This more than anything suggests (if it is true), not for the first time, that Zuma has sold our sovereignty to these shady interlopers for something a lot more than a mess of pottage.

My underlying point is that Zuma’s power is becoming more brittle and his lines of support stretched thinner and thinner. He is engaging in actions that parts of his party find repulsive and there is a point beyond which a system under stress can quickly unravel as the connections snap and the nodes pop.

… but it’s difficult to know who to back

Thank you Mail and Guardian for publishing the story we all wanted even though you have probably broken the whole cannon of ethics in journalism.

The story to which I refer, titled “Ramaphosa starts fight for top job”, was published in the print edition of the aforesaid newspaper on November 13, it was written by Mmanaledi Mataboge & Matuma Letsoalo and leads with that treasured line: “ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has declared his intention to stand for the ruling party’s presidency in 2017, sources say.”

Yes, we all know that sources say “Space pumpkins stole my baby”, “Jesus was an astronaut” and “Jacob Zuma has no relationship whatsoever with SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni”, but in the M&G case referred to above I am prepared not only to forgive them because they took one on the chin for the team but I honour, respect and encourage them through the difficult times that lie ahead for them and other similarly esteemed organs.

So … Cyril Ramaphosa is the presidential candidate for a slate including Gwede Mantashe, is (probably) backed by Gauteng and Eastern Cape provincial ANC’s, is also backed by Limpopo but unreliably and incoherently. They (this camp) will fight on every terrain where votes are up for grabs in 2017 – which includes KwaZulu-Natal that they narrowly lost to the opposition at the provincial conference last weekend. They will obviously try to win Western Cape, Northern Cape and seem confident that the ‘premier league’ provinces (Free State, Mpumalanga and North West under the the charming patrons,Ace Magashule, David Mabuza, Supra Mahumapelo) should yield votes in their favour too.

The other camp, let’s call it the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma Camp, is backed by the ‘premier league’, the ANC Women’s League, the ANC Youth League, the winning faction in Kwazulu-Natal (and that is big cheese in ANC internal national votes) and all the premier league provinces. So they are ahead, in case you missed that.

If that’s all plain sailing for you up till now, here comes the confusing bit: the SACP is under vigorous attack by most of the elements supporting the Dlamini-Zuma camp and we must assume the SACP is backing the Ramaphosa/Mantashe ticket.

I would prefer things to be neater. I haven’t argued this point in these pages in enough detail – or with enough vitriol – but in my private pantheon of villains of South African post liberation politics the SACP has pride of place. In about 2005, facing a probable ousting from the ruling alliance by Mbeki, the SACP pulled off a tactically brilliant but deeply unprincipled counter stroke by riding the debauched, corrupt, amoral, untrustworthy, deceitful, disreputable, tribal, traditionalist, sexist, shameful and scandal-ridden – but still saleable to the populist masses – Jacob Zuma back to power in December 2007 – later ensuring Mbeki’s early removal from the presidency. (Can I say that on my blog? No, you’re fine. That’s all true. I took the illegal stuff out; it halved the length of the story – Ed).

The SACP was lavishly rewarded in the Judas coin of cabinet posts and general status and influence and continued to act as Jacob Zuma’s strength and shield through the myriad scandals that were to follow.

It is my belief that the impact this party’s control of industrial policy has had on our national economy has been little short of ruinous, and its top leadership has shown arrogance, contempt and self-aggrandisement on a scale I would never, ever, have predicted from the party I idealised throughout the 1980’s.

So what happened? Why did groups I assume are close to … or proxies for … Jacob Zuma begin attacking the SACP. (Lets leave the #FeesMustFall for the moment as a stroke of luck for those pushing this line … and get back to it when we are being more conspiratorial.)

Slight rumours of criticism of Jacob Zuma’s various excesses and the SACP’s culpability in its stance in relation to the president filtered into the public domain from discussions internal to the SACP in the lead up to its 3rd Special National Congress in July 2015. Perhaps that self criticism was a lot harsher and the party realised that sticking with Zuma, his policies, his patrimonial and clientelist style, his absence of a plan would lead the country, the ANC and the SACP towards catastrophe?

I do think the SACP has been a restraining hand on the worst excesses of corruption and patronage … so it is not inconceivable that in contrition (and lack of other choices) they have joined the good guys.

I have discussed in detail in the past why Ramaphosa will always be treated with caution by the exiles, Robben Islanders, and the those who worked primarily in the underground military and security apparatuses of the banned ANC. I will get back to this question as I think the conclusion I drew might be changing.

Three last small points

I think both candidates would be more than adequate to fill the positions they are competing for. A significant portion of Dlamini-Zuma’s support is coming from groups that are characterised by the words I used to describe Jacob Zuma six paragraphs above this one. If there is a large centrist group of progressive Africanists, waiting to show their hand for Dlamini-Zuma, let them do so soon. And they should learn from the SACP that unprincipled alliances can end up doing you much harm.

The ‘woman for president’ argument is basically rubbish. Interestingly it was Thabo Mbeki in his struggle against the rise of Zuma that brought up this facile and distracting little trick. At least Mbeki had made the right noises about the role of women throughout his presidency so that when he suggested Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (then deputy president), alternatively Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, it could not as easily be dismissed as a dishonest ploy.

The argument being advanced in 2015 that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma should be president because it is time for a woman president, is being advanced by the most backward, traditionalist, dare I say misogynistic, elements of the ANC. Dismiss the argument out of hand – even if the appointment of a women president, perhaps of the highly experienced Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, might be something of which we could all be justifiably proud. The argument has been advanced purely for factional reasons – which doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t get support from those who believe it would be inherently a good thing.

Finally this is all being played out in the public realm (which basically means it is being cobbled together out of hints and rumours by analysts and journalists) extremely early.

Remember this is a contest that will only be formally resolved in 2017 (probably in December of that year) at the ANC elective National Conference and only lead to a change in the country’s government and president in 2019. I assume it is a sign of desperate desire for change (for the better) and fear of change (for the worse) that has caused these issues to assume such a central public focus so early.

I wanted to discuss something called heuristics, which refers to the way we make decisions or reach an understanding about something, especially when the matter under consideration is complicated.

The word (heuristics) can mean the short cuts we take but the general field also deals with the many errors of thinking to which such short cuts can and do lead.

There was a particular line from a client note I wrote earlier this weak as I was considering the matter of Dianne Kohler Barnard’s booting from the Democratic Alliance that I thought about afterwards and wondered on what basis I had reached the conclusion.

The line was : “If I had to take a wild, but still informed, guess, I would say the DA is likely to pick up stragglers from this defection but the EFF will get the lioness’s share, and apathy the lion’s” (this being in relation to ANC losing support in urban black middle-class and DA attempts to keep its current support and also win some of the new.)

But then I thought I might as well show you the note before I went onto a discussion about heuristics to give myself something to use as a basis for the discussion. The version of my note below had some of the ruder but funnier bits pulled by those who have better judgement than me. But seeing as this is my website I thought I would leave in the the silly jokes as I wrote them.

SA Politics – 3 November 2015

Kgalema Motlanthe says the alliance is dead… and the ANC respectfully nods its head. The SACP and Cosatu look increasingly as if they will be on their own soon.

The Gauteng ANC and the Gauteng government fighting to bring the ANC as a whole back to the black middle class (and the middle classes generally).

The DA uses the meat cleaver against supposed racist sentiments in its ranks – but a rose is a rose is a rose.

Drought and failing infrastructure raises risk that water shortages will be the new load-shedding.

… and in other news, ideal candidate Tokyo Sexwale stands for FIFA presidency and the ANC Women’s League marches on the Union Buildings in heroic defence of Jacob Zuma’s dignity.

Ex-President Kgalema Motlanthe says the unsayable truth that everybody knows and a calm and respectful ANC welcomes his intervention … the pigs have indeed taken flight

In an exclusive interview with Business Day yesterday (catch it on YouTube here but the whole – extremely interesting – text here), the widely admired and respected ex-ANC deputy president and ANC secretary general and ex-country president (from 25 September 2008 to 9 May 2009) said things about the ruling alliance that everyone knows but few have dared say.

The alliance is dead, Motlanthe declared. The three organisations have become one organisation. In so becoming, Cosatu expelled 350,000 workers by expelling its largest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) as well as the leadership that had criticised the failure of Cosatu to take a stand independent of the ANC. The ANC would now meet as opponents those workers and shop stewards in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and other areas of the Eastern Cape in local government elections next year.

He said a number of other things that were stern – if coded – attacks on the current leadership of the ANC:

Rising debt is fast approaching 50% of GDP. “We have a crisis and people who understand that are the people in Treasury because every week they have to go and borrow money in order to manage the current account… and they are raising this money in markets where political sentiment counts for naught”.

“Nuclear, for instance, it’s going to cost trillions,” he said. “If you have no regard for public debt… and it’s public debt… not government … it would affect each of us, each individual South African” – Business Day 02/11/2015.

He stood against Zuma at Mangaung party elections knowing he would lose because he refused to be part of a leadership where “it would be a constant battle just to get them to operate on the basis of the (ANC) constitution” – Business Day 02/11/2015.

He thought the decision to expel Julius Malema was part of the rise of unethical and factional decision-making. Now “(what) the EFF is saying resonates with their (young people’s) own feelings.”

The bullying tactics of the ANC in the National Assembly alienated people from minority groups – for example Afrikaners were “drawing back into their laager”.

The ANC put out a media statement, to the astonishment of many, on 2 November saying: “The African National Congress wants to affirm Comrades Kgalema Motlanthe as a leader and a voice reason” – and went on in the same vein – see here.

Cosatu diplomatically trashed him: “we find it regrettable that, he has ignored all the facts,” said the official statement. “Cde Kgalema was part of the leadership collective in government and in the ANC that defended labour brokers and e-tolls …” etc., etc. See here for the whole whine.

The SACP is, for the moment, maintaining a stunned silence.

So what?

Motlanthe is seen, in my opinion correctly, as an impeccably honourable man and representative of the ANC’s best instincts – which is largely why the Zuma machine had to squeeze him out after Mangaung in 2012. But there are new winds blowing through the ANC. Zuma is either on the retreat or happily edging towards retirement. The SACP and Cosatu are closer than ever to exiting (probably by being pushed) the ruling alliance.

While opposition is growing everywhere, it does not yet threaten the ANC’s overall and powerful majority. However, anyone with an eye on 2019, 2024 or 2029 – for example Motlanthe – the implacable consequences of the current trends are obvious. Defections from the ANC are closely linked to perceptions of corruption and the nepotistic behaviour associated with the Nkandla gang, perceptions that are most strongly held by the urban middle classes.

The ANC can either start or make visible a process of renewal at its National Congress in 2017 or a gradual decline, shift into rural areas and the defection of the urban middle classes is inevitable. This is precisely the road Zanu-PF took when it started losing ground in its most educated urban constituencies. That Zimbabwean journey is on-going and unhappy.

Gauteng – trying to seize the ANC by the scruff of its neck and pull it towards modernity and the urban middle classes

Look at this full page advertisement in Sunday Independent 1/11/2015:

… and this:

Front page advertisement in same newspaper

So what?

We have written extensively (here for the most detailed example) about the ANC losses in the Gauteng metropolitan areas in the May 2014 election and how this is applying pressure on the ANC to move back towards its urban middle class base.

The above advertisements are an almost perfect example of the marketing – and governance – campaigns the ANC Gauteng provincial government is conducting, undoubtedly with its eye on the 2016 local government and 2019 national elections.

As the link to our research above indicates, the ANC is vulnerable in its most sophisticated urban constituencies (Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and the Greater Johannesburg Metro in this case) and is least vulnerable in the poorly educated and poverty stricken rural areas.

(Some analysts interestingly believe that this is a ‘perverse incentive’, linked to this defecting black middle-class, for the ANC to underfund tertiary education. See the inimitable Johnny Steinberg argue this case, with all the requisite subtlety and disclaimers, in Business Day 10/30/2015 here.)

The Desperate Alliance

Ms Dianne Kohler Barnard, (now ex) shadow minister of police, was axed from the Democratic Alliance over the weekend after she was found guilty of misconduct, bringing the party into disrepute and contravening its social media policy.

What she had done was share a Facebook post that argued some aspects of government were better managed under apartheid strongman PW Botha than they are today. She claims not to have read the post properly, and immediately deleted it and apologised when she realised what it said. She was initially suspended but a disciplinary committee decided to expel her from the party.

So what?

On the face of it this appears to be a harsh and hurried sentence – unless the disciplinary hearing discovered that, in fact, Barnard did have apartheid sympathies and is an admirer of PW Botha. I find this unlikely – but that her re-posting of the article was careless and insensitive is beyond doubt. However, the punishment probably has more to do with DA desperation to woo suspicious black voters than any previously hidden demonic impulses in Barnard.

The DA has to make whatever strategic choices it feels are necessary, but we doubt that expelling Barnard or, in fact, electing Mmusi Maimane, will be enough window dressing to tempt the mass of voters into the shop. Risk is always highest as one steps from a safe ledge to another. The DA is stuck in a peculiar conundrum of needing to take care of its “racial base” in its ‘safe’ white and coloured constituencies (apologies for the casual South African terminology – we use these terms because they had precise historical/legal meanings under apartheid and they have on-going consequences and meanings in the present) while reaching out to the ANC’s fragmenting urban middle-class base.

If we had to take a wild, but still informed, guess, we would say the DA is likely to pick up stragglers from this defection but the EFF will get the lioness’s share, and apathy the lion’s.

Kidnap and MTN – risky business

City Press 11/01/2015 argues that the size of the proposed MTN fine for tardiness in deactivating millions of improperly registered SIM cards despite numerous warnings and fines, is because the matter “stopped being a purely regulatory issue and became a matter of national security” when unregistered MTN SIMs were used by kidnappers to negotiate a ransom for a former Nigerian finance minister in September.

The Nigerian Communications Commission has imposed a fine of N1.04 trillion, the equivalent of ZAR70b (a number of different estimates are given, but this is the general region). Read the full article here and another take here.

So what?

Regulatory and political risks are rising throughout the world, as sovereigns assert their power over markets, globalised or otherwise, partly in response to the Great Recession and partly in response to terrorist threats (and often to protect their own ‘national’ enterprises against foreign competition). It has now become common for massive fines to be imposed by governments on companies that are not necessarily domiciled in the jurisdictional area under that government’s control.

Drought and failing infrastructure raise risk that water shortages will be the new load-shedding

KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces have been declared disaster areas due to drought conditions that are worse than they have been for 24 years. Minister of Water and Sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane said 170 water schemes (that usually means dams) in the country are currently affected by the drought – Eye Witness News 02/11/2015.

Water utilities are also under pressure after years of under-investment while having had to expand connections to millions previously denied access by discriminatory legislation under apartheid.

“Water shedding will take the form of pressure reduction to manage leaks in the system and an overall loss of assurance of supply,” said Anthony Turton, a professor at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of Free State.

So what?

Food security, food price inflation and a multitude of industrial processes are water dependent. Water clean enough for human and animal consumption is also, obviously, important. The predicted length of the drought and the state of our increasingly rickety water and sewerage reticulation systems represent increasing risks in South Africa.

And in other news …

Tokyo Sexwale, ex-Robben Islander, businessman, ex-Premier of Gauteng and ex-Minister of Human Settlements (and ex-too-many-other-things-to-name) has announced he will be making himself available to replace Sepp Blatter as FIFA president. Sexwale has very little football administrative experience and I cannot think of anyone better qualified to run FIFA … it’s a perfect fit.

The ANC Women’s League marched on the Union Buildings last Friday in the high priority cause of ‘defending Jacob Zuma’s dignity’. Some commentators have argued that it was a last ditch attempt. “That horse has bolted,” said one analyst who preferred not to be named Elspeth. Almost 300 members of the League were engaged in the mass march which was peaceful and well ordered.

So … my intention is to use bits of that to discuss heuristics, for those of you who are clamouring to hear more about that.

There were several times last week when I felt admiration for the protesting students, including those who crashed through the gates of parliament and, quite bravely in many cases, stood up to the SAPS’s counter attack, stun grenades and all.

I admit to some brief, irresponsible, trickster elation – Loki let loose upon the world – good for them … ha ha, let it all burn … that will show the fat bastards inside the building.

I didn’t lose my sense of judgement to the degree that I never felt sorry for some of the SAPS members who were woefully unprepared and overwhelmed, just as I felt disgusted with others for the unnecessary violence against the initially peaceful, if somewhat over-boisterous, students.

But by the time the Sunday papers rolled out I was becoming slightly nauseated by the ridiculously laudatory and pompous language being used to describe the protesting student of the #FeesMustFall and #shutdown campaigns.

I am not giving examples because these were mostly hyperbolic aberrations from commentators and journalists I otherwise admire (read City Press, the Sunday Independent or the Sunday Times of the 25th of October 2015 and the point will clearly and quickly be made). In general the pitch and tenor was thus:

… which is Eugène Delacroix ‘s “Liberty leading the People”, 1830 – the French Revolution before it ate its children.

Well, this week the #FeesMustFall movement is also eating its children – although it’s a much smaller snack than the French feast after 1830.

However the students have banked the partial victory of the 0% fee increase for 2016. And can there be anyone in the SA news-consuming-public who has not considered the many accounts of black students shaving their nutritional intake so they can send part of their National Student Financial Aid money back to their parents and siblings?

This is what I wrote in a client note earlier this week:

Student protests – expect splits, fragmentation, radicalisation, isolation, ill-discipline and loss of momentum – but they kept it together long enough to change the game.

The student protests against fee increases have begun to wind down and fragment after the sometimes violent clashes at the Union Buildings on Friday where President Zuma acceded, in a closed meeting with student leaders, to the 0%-increase-for-2016 demand.

In parliament Minister of Higher Education (and General Secretary of the SACP) Blade Nzimande had a torrid time defending his handling of the protests and explaining where the money for a 0% increase would come from. His main proposal was: “My view is that the government must have the political will to tax the rich and wealthy to fund higher education” – quoted in Business Day 28/10/2015.

So what?

The student revolt has deepened the opposition to government in general and increased disillusionment with party politics amongst students throughout the country. On balance the ANC has probably lost more ground than it was losing in this constituency anyway. However, the ruling party retains a variety of youth allies that operate on the campuses (including several SRCs, the ANC Youth League, the South African Students Congress – SASCO – and the Young Communists League – YCL.)

There will be fiscal implications that we will be exploring in the next few weeks as we examine the problem of funding for education generally and higher education in particular.

Zuma’s government must feel beset from all sides but the more focussed political attack is on the South African Communist Party – coming from within the ANC. Prior to its special national congress in July the SACP let it be put out that it wasn’t quite as gung-ho about Zuma’s increasingly corrupt and incompetent presidency than it appeared from its slavish defence of the man from Nkandla for the last 6 years. This in turn has led to Zuma’s most ardent (and patronage driven) supporters in the ANC Youth League (and the so called premier league) to escalate an attack on the SACP and its leadership. The student revolt against fee increases was a opportunity welcomed by these groups to join an attack on Nzimande.

It is still too early to predict with high levels of confidence a final collapse of the ruling alliance but the possibility is probably higher than it has been since 1994. An exit of the SACP (and probably Cosatu) from their formal ‘governing alliance’ status with the ANC might lead to ‘financial market positive’ changes in industrial and labour policy, but as likely might remove some of the constraints on corruption the SACP and Cosatu have brought to government and the alliance.

Okay, enough of all of that.

What I really wanted to say was that while watching the student and police confrontations my thoughts went back to the many protests and clashes my ‘comrades’ and I had with with the police and army in the 1980’s.

On the ‘white’ campuses it was largely just teargas and beatings with shamboks or quirts – although I remember the panic and fear as much as I do the elation.

In the townships it was a different matter – shotguns, R5 rifles and necklacing – excitement, yes; but also horror and terror.

I was explaining some of the differences between then and now to a close family member who is a student at a ‘previously white’ campus.

As I spoke I gradually came to realise something – funny at first, but then embarrassing. I was starting to sound remarkably like the Four Yorkshiremen.

The 1980’s was not worse than Marikana; and I am forced to remind myself that this, too, hovered over those students last week as the possible consequences of their actions.

So to lighten it slightly and to own up to my own pomposity, I sent that family member a copy of the famous Monty Python piece.

Four Yorkshiremen Sketch

Monty Python

Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort.

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

MP: Aye. In them days, we’d a’ been glad to have the price of a cup o’ tea.

GC: A cup ‘ COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness.”

EI: ‘E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN’. We used to live in this tiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin’ in a corridor! Woulda’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say “house” it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o’clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.”

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’.

I had been writing and then road showing (here and abroad) an argument that suggested pressures acting on the ANC might, ultimately, save the organisation from its slow-motion collapse into what can best be described as a kind of criminal conspiracy.

On the whole, as they say, it was a deliberately positive counter to the life draining wails of despair that were starting to keep me from my sleep.

In the ANC there are thousands of pockets of resistance, but the overall character of the organisation and the way it has embedded itself with the state is deeply reminiscent of a huge wasp I watched yesterday stun an even bigger spider, implant it’s eggs in the juicy arachnid abdomen, stuff the bundle in a piece of dry cane, where the baby wasps will soon hatch and begin eating the spider in a precises way that keeps the host alive long enough for the new crop of wasps to fly off to carry on the business for which they were born. I believe some of such wasps are able to mess with the spider’s DNA in such a way that the spider will spend its last dying moments protecting the baby wasps.

This is an almost perfect metaphor for the behaviour of the hijacked centre of the ANC.

But I don’t think that is the whole – or even main – story, and below is the introduction to a longish report I wrote in October last year with my colleagues, Joan Tshivhinda (quantitative analyst) and Jeff Schultz (economist), that argues we have a better than even chance of being in a much improved situation by …. about 2020. That the pressures acting on the ANC could powerfully reshape the organisation for the better.

This is purely the introduction to the document. Joan did lots of quantitative work on the 2014 elections and Jeff did the same for the definition and class structure of SA society – so I think I am going to need more direct permission from BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities to publish the whole thing, but I hope to do so soon.

But for now:

Introduction – Against a Dark Background

(That title was made up purely for the blog post … the original title was “SA Political, Quantitative & Economic Research – emerging middle class lights up the gloom.)

There are significantly more important forces shaping our politics than the bad behaviour of our politicians.

Deep within the electorate a rapidly growing black African middle class is beginning to shape political and economic outcomes more profoundly than the size of the group implies.

We believe this group will determine many major outcomes for our politics and economics in the next few years.

Emerging from our analysis is a first (and best) case scenario in which the ANC goes through a process of renewal and recalibration over the next few years, powerfully reclaiming the defecting black African middle class and rolling out economic policies that will be optimum for financial markets and business.

However, we also describe several significantly threatening alternative scenarios, including further splits in the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) slipping below 50% of the national vote and losing the major metropolitan areas, the centre of opposition shifting toward some combination of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the emergent socialist party… and even more gloomy potential paths we could, with a low probability, travel down.

Many institutions of political representation in South Africa (most obviously political parties and trade unions) are undergoing turmoil – within themselves, in competition with each other and in rapidly changing levels of popularity.

here are various methods we can use to seek to explain the turmoil. Much of the mass media focus has been on the character and integrity of the President (of the ANC and the country) Jacob Zuma, and his allies – and we attribute much of the turmoil to the Zuma camp’s alleged attempts to capture a lion’s share of available rents and patronage – and to keep their principal out of the courts. While we do not deny the role of individuals (as heroes or villains) in shaping history, we think it obligatory to examine changes in the deep structural features of society, especially in processes of class formation, and the changing needs of production, to seek explanations for the changing face of our politics.

Our basic premise is that ‘class formation’ among black Africans was held back by apartheid, and the legislation and state that defined that system. But in the 1960s and 1970s the global economy began to shift in its character, and in its requirements of the function of labour, goods and capital markets. In South Africa the economy shifts toward services and manufacturing and requires a more settled, urban, educated workforce, the members of which are able to purchase the goods and services being produced by the new economy.

For the first time in almost 100 years, black South Africans could realistically aspire to be urbanised, settled, housed, better educated and able to afford the goods and services of the new economy. And this set the emerging class powerfully against the political system of apartheid that understood its survival and the survival of white dominance depended on the defeat or diversion of these aspirations.

It is more useful and has more explanatory power, to understand that underlying the campaigns of resistance and repression and the attempts by the apartheid government to rejig its systems that controlled the movement, work prospects and political aspirations of black people were the reasons for the inexorable rise of the black African middle class.The 1976 uprising, the formation of the UDF in 1983, the formation of Cosatu in 1986 and its clear alignment with the still banned ‘Congress Movement’, the strikes, the school boycotts, the growing campaign for international isolation, the rapid reappearance of ANC symbols, leaders and flags in South Africa in the mid-1980s, the escalation of the ‘armed struggle’ and then the unbanning of the liberation movements, the release of leaders, the tricky negotiations at Codessa (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) 1 and 2 and finally the first democratic election in 1994 – could be seen to have been caused, orchestrated and guided by wise leaders and clever tacticians from both sides. And we don’t believe that statement is wrong, but we do think it misses the main point.

The apartheid state tried everything to head off the rise of the Africa middle class:

the ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns in black communities – which only at its most trite consisted of giving out copious amounts of sweets and propaganda from the top of armoured vehicles;

the attempt to establish a Tricameral Parliament to give political representation to Coloureds and Indians and the vigorous attempts to build the Bantustan[1] administrations and promote the system of local black councils[2] – attempting to ensure that ‘the oppressed’ would not find unity in opposing the regime – and ensuring that black African aspirations were diverted to stony ground and

the campaigns of repression, including raids into neighbouring states, troops deployed into townships and state-funded assassinations squads and other ‘dirty tricks’ campaigns.

The not so subtle point we are trying to make was this was all actually driven by the African middle classes struggling to come into being (led and ridden by various political formations) and held back by the apartheid state and legislative regime. Thus, the emerging black middle class was both the engine and the prize of the contest between the liberation movement and the apartheid regime.

We draw theoretically on both the Weberian and Marxist definitions of class. With the defeat of the apartheid state, long suppressed class formation and differentiation has exploded in black communities. We attempt to describe and characterise the black African middle class (possibly classes) using a mixture of methods:

Our classification has a minimum per capita income threshold which will be significantly above the middle of the income distribution for black South Africans;

We will show the group is the fastest growing segment of the Living Standards Measures (LSMs) table since 1994 and we will argue that it is politically influential and powerful beyond its numbers, consumption power and voting preferences;

Finally our definition will include the fact that members of the group will be more likely to have tertiary education (or professional or technical qualifications) and be more likely to live in Gauteng.

If we conceive of our political parties, electorate and the interplay of powerful other interests as part of a complex ecology with eco-niches and selective Darwinian pressures, then much of the turmoil in the ecosystem (the formation of the EFF, the torturous debates about affirmative action in the Democratic Alliance (DA), the splitting off from Cosatu of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and the formation of some form of socialist alliance, the details in the drop in support for the ANC in this last election, the extreme anger about Jacob Zuma’s alleged diversion of public assets, his attempts to avoid the law and avoid various forms of constitutional curtailment) can best be explained by the growing assertiveness of the class we describe.

We overlay these categorisations with a close examination of the fact that the African National Congress lost approximately 11% of the national votes it won previously from across the geography of the urban black African areas of South African industrial heartland of Gauteng in the May 2014 general elections. We point out that in areas that were more representative of the middle class we defined above, these losses were greater.

We conclude that the pressures being brought to bear

could split the ANC further;

could drive the party further toward its flirtation with a sort of rural populism driven by patronage and traditional patriarchal authority;

could drive the party further into the hands of the South African Communist Party which has been the main beneficiary of the rise of Jacob Zuma; and

could provide space for the EFF, the DA and Numsa’s in potentia socialist party to grow to the point that the ANC drops below 50% vote.

We hope/predict that the middle classes and the Gauteng ANC, as the part of the party most exposed to the middle classes to which we refer, is already in the process of preparing to draw the party back from the brink it is approaching. The Zuma faction is entrenched, but it is our belief that the brand value being lost under his leadership will inevitably lead to a correction.

In general, our conclusion will be that the negative political consensus about South Africa is overdone, because attention is not being given to the deep, underlying structural drivers of change in the country, namely the coming into its own of the black African middle classes.

How history works – the origins of the black African middle class and what really caused apartheid to fall

Change in the structure, priorities and labour processes of the global economy began to accelerate in the 1960s and 1970s with a relative shrinking of primary resource extraction and heavy industry. South Africa, like much of the rest of the world, experienced relative growth in the manufacturing and services sector.

Thus the economy began to require a settled, better educated and skilled labour force, and one that could procure the goods and services produced by the new economy.

Black South Africans could, for the first time, realistically aspire, as a group, to be more settled, housed, better educated and be the consumers of certain goods and services to which their parents had had no possible access. Thus their interests melded with the similar interests of the already existing black African middle class that had managed to take root in the stony apartheid ground.

This nascent middle class had long been deliberately stunted by the apartheid state – and certainly segregated – to keep it from competing with its white counterparts, but in the views of Nzimande[3] (yes the very same one[4]) quoted in Southall[5], the group could be broken down into the following categories:

The bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie – basically officials tied closely to the central apartheid state, but also town and city administrators and in the Bantustans (reliable allies of the apartheid state in Nzimande’s view);

The civil petty bourgeoisie – civil servants and state employees like teachers, nurses and clerks – and from whose ranks Nzimande argues was drawn much of the leadership of the national liberation movement (clearly entirely unlike the bureaucratic types mentioned above);

The trading petty Africanbourgeoisie – which Nzimande eccentrically orders into several groups based on their ability to align with the liberation movement, but concluding that those belonging to the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC), while clearly pro-capitalist, were useful allies to the liberation movement.

The corporate petty bourgeoisie – basically black employees in major companies which, since the early 1970s, had “sought to legitimise capitalism through the discourse of the ‘free enterprise system”. In Nzimande’s views (as summarised by Southall) this group was “simultaneously hugely frustrated by limited opportunity and white managerial racism, uneasily situated as it was between capital’s attempts to create a black middle class and white management’s defence of its own class interests”.

The point of all of this is that almost all academic research agrees that there had been an “enormous increase in the African middle class between 1960 and 1970” Harold Wolpe in Southall 1977) “indicating the growing upward mobility of blacks into clerical, technical and non-manual jobs and of Africans into skilled employment”. (Southall) [6]

There are two observations that are worth making:

The group definitions in the literature do not distinguish between skilled and upwardly mobile workers and the classes of traders and small business owners and civil servants.

Because the definition is loose the group appeared almost impossible to count, with Samuel Nolutshungu (1983) estimating 121,948 members of the black middle class by 1970 and Wolpe (1974) putting the number at 1,315,800 for roughly the same time.

However, for our purposes here these are not problems because our argument is that, under the heel of apartheid, was growing a class of people whose expectations were realistically rising and this led to rapidly heightening political resistance.

At the height of apartheid, the oppression faced by all black South Africans, and especially Africans, was the political basis for downplaying growing class differences and it appears to us that the sense that change was possible, that the aspirations were realisable, was a multiclass phenomenon among all black South Africans.

It would be equally difficult to describe the sophistication, brutality; or give a proper timeline of the apartheid state’s attempt to survive the onslaught – and the consequences of its failure to do so.It would be impossible here to adequately describe the growth and momentum of resistance in the 1970s and 1980s. From the massive strikes in Durban in 1973 through the 1976 uprising, the campaign to defeat the Tricameral Parliament from 1983, the strikes, the bombs, the stay-aways, the States of Emergency from July 1985 and the growing criminalisation of any form of opposition – the profound growth of international solidarity for South Africans who were living under apartheid – and rising costs of resisting and defending the system.

However, for our purposes, it is interesting to examine one aspect of the state’s reaction when it realised how rapidly and powerfully black expectations were rising in the 1970s with the changing requirements of the domestic and global economy.

The Wiehahn Commission submitted an interim report to Parliament in May 1979 which recommended:Under pressure from South African and global businesses, especially after the Durban strikes in 1973 and the uprising in 1976, the National Party government made a serious attempt to reform the industrial relations system and the linked system that governed the rights of black Africans to move from place to place (influx control).

Legal recognition of Black trade unions and migrant workers

Abolition of statutory job reservation

Retention of the closed shop bargaining system

The creation of a National Manpower Commission, and

The introduction of an Industrial Court to resolve industrial litigation[7]

The Riekert Commission reported at about the same time and recommended:

Black workers already in urban areas with the ‘requisite permission’ to be there should receive ‘preferential treatment’ in finding employment – and thus create a stable labour force and encourage a “Black urban middle class”[8]

Other Black workers could be removed after 72 hours of looking for work in an urban area and influx control would be tightened.

It is not our purpose and beyond our ability to explain the complex mechanism by which the apartheid legislative regime and its state pursued its ends but what is noteworthy for our purposes here is that National Party strategist and securocrats understood what was happening and they attempted to accommodate and divert the force that was coming at them, namely a rapidly growing group of politically marginalised, controlled and subjugated people who had seen the possibility of a better life and were prepared to struggle for it.

What happened in the 1970s and 1980s and in South Africa would have been strongly predicted in a piece of academic work presented by US sociologist James C. Davies in 1962: Toward a Theory of Revolution” in the American Sociological Review, (27)1 5-9.

We have deliberately left out the role played by individuals, organisations and leaders in building political and military resistance, in mobilising the majority into defiance and then in skilfully negotiating a peace, a new constitution and democratic country.Simply put Davies argues that in societies where expectations of improvement in the conditions of life begin to rise, they inevitably outstrip the real improvement. Finally daring to hope for the removal of influx control and the right to live and work where they chose, black South Africans instead got the mean-spirited liberalisations of the Wiehann and Ricket commissions – and the revolts driven by an unacceptable gap between expectations and reality followed as night follows day.

It is our contention that what broke apartheid, with its laws, its state, its political parties, its cultural institutions, its security apparatus and its ideology was precisely its attempt to dam the flow of people’s rising aspirations – and we are still in the catastrophic flood of that dam having burst.We have done this because we want to emphasise that the deep and powerful historical forces of class formation and economic change tend to drive politics, not the other way around. The best politicians are those who realise these limits, who really understand that their profession is the art of the possible. One may slightly divert and shape the torrent but one’s power is strictly limited.

The Black African middle classes today – an introduction

In this sense the pressures that built up against the apartheid edifice are the same, and the same energy is driving South Africa into the future. It is the long suppressed black African middle class, having steamrolled apartheid out-of-the-way and now moving through our politics and economy with the same irresistible power… and its expectations continue to rise.But again, while we think these programmes have obviously had a major impact – and are likely to be tightened up – the real ‘explosion’ and driving force have been the aspirations of ordinary people who have long been denied the opportunity to seek to the good life, to educate their children to higher levels than was open to them and to accumulate assets. The ANC government has opened the doors, but it is impossible for those doors to be opened wide enough and it is essentially a market force that causes people to push, shove, clump and burst through the crumbling entrance as fast and as far as possible.The formal removal of apartheid legislation in the 1990s, the deliberate and vigorous and largely successful attempts to change the demographics of the state and civil service, including that of the major parastatals, a host of legislation designed to pressure private companies to put equity in black hands and to appoint black senior managers, the use of licensing in the minerals sector and, importantly, the use of state expenditure to promote black entrepreneurial activity have been important pillars of government policy and have undoubtedly been major forces in promoting a black African middle class.

Apartheid, among its myriad impacts on the shape of South African society, suppressed ‘normal’ class formation and segmentation among the black population. It was, in fact, and for a long time, a systematic attempt to do just that – so as to protect whites from the competition.

We have described in the previous section how various black African middle-classes as well as upwardly mobile sections of the working class emerged despite the best efforts of the apartheid system.

[1] A Bantustan was the cornerstone of the system: black people were allocated (often arbitrarily) to one of 10 territories where they would live and be politically represented. The idea was to concentrate members of particular language or ‘ethnic’ groups in these places and black people would eventually only be in ‘South Africa’ as migrant workers from these homelands. Four of the homelands, Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei were declared independent, but this was never recognised outside South Africa.We concluded, however, that the apartheid system was destined to fail as soon as the economy required something different from black South Africans and black South Africans could therefore realistically aspire to something different.

[2] A major social project defined in the Black Administration Act 38 of 1927 – endlessly amended to promote the co-optation of influential individuals in the black community – that in turn led to the burnings and killing of such councillors, most notably through the infamous ‘necklacing’ (placing a burning tyre around the victim’s neck).

I have been completely taken up with a project (now completed) that argued that the black African middle-class was our single biggest asset and the workings of the interests of that class in the world would save our politics and help our economics. Yaay!

The basic argument looked at the defection suffered by the ANC in the May elections from its most sophisticated constituency and went on to argue that things were going to turn out rosy in the end. (There are hundreds of tables and graphs and other clever financial market type number crunching that was mostly done by my brilliant colleagues …. but I will only publish a version of that when I have had a chance to chat to them and get their permission).

Not everyone bought our story, but soon you will be able to make up your own mind if our grounds for optimism (that the ANC self-corrects) have an adequate basis.

The ‘black African middle-class saves South Africa’ project (which is what we started calling as a sort of shorthand … the report is LONG so trust me that really is shorthand) has held me back from completing my promised comments about the SACP. The further we went with the ‘middle-class’ project, the more disturbed I have become about the the role the SACP played in engineering the end of Mbeki’s presidency and it’s iron protection of Zuma through the chaos he has brought upon us over the last 4 years.

So as promised I will write that out here and publish it before year end … that’s the SACP story … so 2 promises so far.

Meanwhile here is an extract of my bespoke comments (now too dated to remain bespoke) on the Numsa split (written on the trot) a week ago. My brilliant editor friend in London suggested it be titled:

South African politics: Love’s labours lost

Numsa expulsion … if you love it let it go, if you hate it pray for its demise

The central Executive Committee of Cosatu expelled the largest member of the trade union federation at an extended weekend meeting of the special Central Executive Committee (CEC). Irwin Jim, Numsa general secretary gave a 3 hour long spirited defence of Numsa and attack on those trying expelling the union – but to no avail. It has always been a foregone conclusion, but what Numsa was doing was contesting the terrain, trying to stay as long as possible to take as many members and individual with them. The strategy has probably worked and they have come out, if not smelling of roses, then not badly damaged.

So what?

Numsa’s ideological position reaches back in an unbroken line to a strong and independent left faction (referred to as Workerists) which at the formation of Cosatu in 1985 were still strongly critical of the over-close relationship with the ANC. They believed that the ‘national liberation agenda’ of the ANC would swamp the more limited agenda of the pursuit of workers’ rights – and the more expansive pursuit of socialism – and that therefore the unions need to be wary of this ally and always fight for their independence.

As it turns out Cosatu did pretty well out of its relationship with the ANC – getting much of the labour market structured in their favour – to the point that it has done some real damage to our economy. However, the tension between the ANC and Cosatu has continued to rise. Cosatu didn’t like the National Development Plan (too pro-markets), Cosatu didn’t like e-tolling (who in Gauteng and outside The Treasury does?), Cosatu didn’t like the Treasury setting the limits of public sector wage increases, Cosatu didn’t like the youth wage subsidy, believing it to be the short end of segmentation of the labour market into more and less protected (cheaper and more expensive) workers.

And of late the ANC, at the end of its tether about the losses of revenue from the platinum and Numsa strikes, at the violence that accompanied the platinum strikes, at the damage done our investment image by strikes, at the damage done the limping infrastructure programme plagued by strikes, has finally started talking about amendments to the Labour Relations Act that would make it a lot more difficult for Cosatu to strike (make secret balloting compulsory) and make it difficult for nationally damaging strikes (like Amcu’s strike in the platinum sector) to go on indefinitely (make some form of forced independent mediation obligatory after a certain time of being on strike.)

Numsa, and Irvin Jim – and Cosatu general secretary Zwlinzima Vavi – have gradually come into more and more serious conflict with the ANC and the SACP over these policies – and the relationship has finally broken. It must be said that Vavi and Jim have also been on the side of the angels on a number of different issues as well; Corruption Watch, abuse of ministerial car allowances, various human rights issues, including the Dalai Lama visit, the Right to Know Campaign, the Treatment Action Campaign, the protection of the Public Protector, the getting of Zuma to pay back the money, the Gupta wedding, horror at the proposed done Russian nuclear deal … the list is too long, but, in general (and with one or two notable exceptions), Cosatu under Vavi and Jim have defended the defensible – unlike their erstwhile comrades in the ANC and SACP

The expulsion of Numsa, which might quickly be followed by the exit of its closest allies the South African Commercial Clothing and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), Communication Workers Union of South Africa (Pawusa), Democratic Nurses Organisation of South Africa (Denosa), and South African Football Players Union (Safpu) will leave Cosatu much weakened and with an over preponderance of public sector unions.

Numsa – the world is its oyster

For Numsa, the world is its oyster. It has announced intention to set up forums of some form of ‘socialist alliance’ – which we must assume will evolve into a political party, perhaps testing the waters of some constituencies in Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg (where it has pre-existing strong union organisation that could easily be redeployed as party structures in the 2016 municipal election.

Numsa can also now freely pursue its strategy for vertical integration into mining, processing, construction, energy, and manufacturing, including light manufacturing and food processing. Numsa sees these whole value chains of particular metals (and possible other minerals) as natural pillars through which they can exert more power over employers and employer organisations. Up until now Cosatu’s slogan of “One Industry, One Union, One Federation” has prevented Numsa realising its full ambitions (although several unions, especially Num have complained for years that Numsa has poached its members.)

Cosatu?

This leaves Cosatu with the heavyweight public sector unions as its dominant component (and, officially, remember it is still bigger, if not more vigorous, than the bits that have been expelled or might leave in sympathy with Numsa). However the public sector unions are about to embark on a do-or-die wage negotiation in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council. Keep in mind that Numsa fought to stay in Cosatu primarily because it believed it could pull the heart of the federation with it, that in each of the unions, large and small, there were branches and sections and individuals who supported Numsa and supported Numsa’s decision to not back the ANC in the last election. Including significant parts of the public sector unions.

Strikes are a testing time – in fact, wage negotiation are a testing time – and even more so when you have on the other side of the table representatives of a state, so absolutely constrained by the fiscal ledge to which it is clinging that is unlikely to shift towards your bargaining position. The MTBF issued by Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene last month was as close as we have come to the austerity of Trevor Manuel’s first few budgets in the mid 90’s. This was the heart of the Cosatu (and South African Communist Party) attack on Mbeki’s government, with ‘the left’ arguing it was a form of Kowtowing to the Washington Consensus. ‘The left’ then and now believe the way to economic growth is by state spending as a stimulus that creates the virtuous circle. Nene’s budget was the heart of the “1996 Class Project” that Zuma and his allies supposedly defeated at Polokwane in December 2007, which takes the decidedly opposite view of growth: that the state needs to make room for investment and that government needs to create an environment maximally attractive to the same. And part of doing that is keeping borrowing and therefore spending strictly within the bounds acceptable to global capital markets.

Cosatu is now dominated by unions that are not involved in the productive economy. It’s basically the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and the burned out cinders of the likes of the National Union of Mineworkers and other bits and pieces. More than anything these unions are dependent on state spending … but from a state that seems to be all out of resources. We do not think that while Sadtu and Nehawu are ostensibly close to the Zuma faction of the ANC that this is going to take any of the sting out of the coming public sector wage round. Which trade union loves the boss enough to tell its members to back off because he is in political trouble? None that we have ever heard of. And anyway these unions all face a myriad splits, including towards Numsa … they have to show their members they can win them a decent deal.

SACP?

The SACP backed, to the hilt, with everything it had, Jacob Zuma’s rise to power at Polokwane. It did so because its main task was to stop Mbeki and the political programme he represented. Mbeki was increasingly basing ANC policy on promoting the rising black middle-classes and he was doing so at the expense of the trade unions and the SACP for whom he seemed to express ever greater public contempt – and in my opinion would eventually have moved out of the ruling alliance … essentially by collapsing it. The is no question in our minds that Mbeki was making sure that both the SACP and Cosatu had less and less power over ANC policy making. Obviously Mbeki overplayed his hand, not believing his enemies would stoop to backing Jacob Zuma for president. Well he certainly called that one wrong and the rest is history.

The SACP still sits as Zuma’s main backer. Cosatu has essentially collapsed under the pressure of trying to keep its unity and back this president at the same time. The ANC Youth League was expelled along with Julius Malema because Zuma became so tarnishing that it was impossible to stand by him … and it now (the ex-ANCYL) exists as a vigorous and challenging opposition party, the EFF.

So the SACP is sitting there in the Kraal with Jacob Zuma, defending him to the hilt on his myriad transgressions, trying to explain to the world how it (the SACP) is the true representative of the working class as the millions follow Numsa out of the alliance – and it is impossible to avoid the fact that Numsa’s most virulent criticisms are for the SACP.

The ANC

The ANC is looking particularly forlorn. They fought this split, understanding that the loss of Numsa would lead to other losses and would make the 2016 municipal election a myriad-sided fight in which the ANC was likely to get a bloody nose. The ANC still has way to fall. It got just over 62% of the vote in the national election in May this year and just under 62% in the municipal election in 2011. The trajectory is downwards (the party does worse in municipal polls) and there is much fear (if you support the ANC) and much anticipation (if you don’t) of catastrophic results for the ANC in 2016.

As it happens part of our ‘upside surprise’ scenario, is one in which the ANC, freed from the constraints of its alliance with organised labour, recognises the errors of its ways, elects a clean, reforming and effective leadership in 2017 (the National Conference), shuffles the current crew off to the safe retirement and comfortably wins the 2019 elections with a decent development plan at the helm. But this precisely requires the ANC getting a serious shock in the 2016 election. It sounds like a fantasy and probably is. But it is unavoidably apparent that the conditions are looking increasingly hostile for the ANC.

It does appear that if the ANC doesn’t do something radical and soon, it could be in serious electoral trouble. Of course it might chase the EFF and Numsa’s socialist policy in the belief that this would win the party votes. We think there are other and better options the ANC is considering but they are not on the table yet and all we can hear is the repeat of “welcome to the second, more radical phase, of the transition” – which doesn’t actually mean anything, but sounds vaguely (distinctly?) threatening to investors.

Here are some bits and pieces I highlighted for investors over the last few weeks. Thanks as always to BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities for allowing me to republish these snippets here … it is also a touch more information that most people require, but I post it here for the record, if nothing else.

I write these under considerable time pressure – deadline 06h30 0n Monday mornings. They can sometimes be a bit scrappy, but mostly (although with exceptions) still relevant a few weeks later. Where I say ‘yesterday’ or ‘today’ (or whatever) I mean: relative to the date in the highlighted headline above each section. The newest is on the top – stretching all the way back to the ancient history of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at the US-Africa summit in Washington.

01/09/2014

Lesotho, South Africa … and the Guptas

Lesotho Prime Minister, Thomas Thabane, was assisted by South African special forces soldiers to flee to South Africa in the face of a military backed ‘coup’ on early Saturday morning. The ‘coup’ (or ‘coup attempt’ – both terms are used extensively in the coverage) was allegedly orchestrated by Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing.

The key features of the event were the co-ordinated encircling of police barracks by the military, the disarming of the police and the seizing of the national broadcaster in the country’s capital Maseru on Saturday. (Sunday Times, Voice of America, City Press, Sunday Independent – 31/08/2014).

The Sunday Times story suggests the ‘coup’ was sparked by Friday’s firing of army chief Lieutenant-General Kennedy Kamoli by Lesotho’s King Letsie. The City Press reports that South African troops are on standby for further interventions.

Lesotho army spokesman Major Ntele Ntoi has denied there was a coup and says the army’s actions were purely to disarm police “who had been preparing to provide weapons to political parties” – Sunday Times.

Thabane, in a phone interview with Voice of America, said he was not going back until his safety was secured, that there was a situation of “total indiscipline” in the army and that soldiers were “running around the streets, threatening people” and “quite openly stating that they want my neck” – see here for VOA coverage.

So what?

This is almost too bizarre to type out, but here goes: a significant portion of the coverage of the event refers to the recent controversy surrounding the issuing by Thabane of diplomatic passports to the Gupta brothers (who we know better as key Zuma and ANC backers and funders, see Mail and Guardian coverage “The Grim Tales of the Brothers Gupta” for background).

At the time of the appointment Thobane said “(t)hese people (the Guptas) are good friends of the ANC and we have good relations with the ANC … I was introduced to them by ANC president [Jacob Zuma] and other ANC officials… I then appointed them to help scout for investment in my country. They have influence in a number of countries that can help Lesotho” – see here for that story.

In highly interpenetrated and interdependent systems of patronage and corruption, unsuccessful attempts to defend one part of the system can unravel the whole system and cause destabilisation throughout the linked networks.

Jacob Zuma’s Russian rest

Jacob Zuma visited Russia this week for six days. He had a light schedule and was, unusually, only accompanied by State Security Minister David Mahlabo and Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Nomaindia Mfeketo. There has been widespread but largely fruitless speculation about what the President was doing in Russia. (See City Press’s “Jacob Zuma’s mysterious mission to Russia” and former leader of the opposition DA Tony Leon in the Sunday Times in an opinion piece titled “How much more abuse can the constitution take from Zuma?” … unfortunately can’t find a link to that.)

So what?

The crisis faced by Russian President Putin is, by all accounts serious and urgent – and it might seem unlikely that he would have made time for a casual tête-à-tête with Jacob Zuma. Thus we can assume that Putin was in part motivated by wanting to demonstrate he still has friends in an increasingly chilly world. Also there is the sourcinig of agricultural products to fill the gaps left by European and US sanctions against Russia over Ukraine – a job South Africa could be well placed to do.

However Jacob Zuma appeared less to be representing South Africa and more on a personal visit – with several reports, including from government, that he would use the opportunity to rest.

It is difficult to escape the perception of two embattled leaders involved in a perhaps complicated exchange and attempting to secure their present and future:

there is the upcoming ZAR850bn nuclear build programme that probably depends on Jacob Zuma staying at the helm in South Africa – Russia reportedly hopes to be central to that programme.

Jacob Zuma’s key spy chiefs all reportedly resigned when he (Zuma) refused to allow them to investigate the Gupta brothers as a serious threat to national security (see back story on that here).

Jacob Zuma faces unprecedented blowback at home, including the possibility of a public discussion around the original fraud, corruption and racketeering charges against him (see here) now that the famous Spy Tapes are to be handed to the Democratic Alliance in the official opposition’s attempts to have the National Prosecuting Authority’s decision not to charge Zuma reviewed.

Also in yesterday’s Sunday Times was an important ‘leaked’ story that South Africa had sent a large group of intelligence officers to be trained in Russia and that “the Russians have recruited at least four of our people, which means we are sitting with double agents” – according to an unnamed source “with inside knowledge of the programme” – Sunday Times 31/08/2014.

Jacob’s Ladder (geddit?) and check out the body languege (Pic from GCIS)

It is not inconceivable or unreasonable to consider the possibility that Jacob Zuma is asking for intelligence and security coverage and offering in return nuclear contracts and public expressions of support. It’s not a perfect theory, but some kind of explanation is required.

Ruling alliance divides itself neatly on defending or attacking the public protector – is Jacob Zuma becoming a cost the ANC cannot bear much longer?

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu general secretary, broke ranks with the ANC on Saturday arguing that the Public Protector’s recommendations on resolving the Nkandla dispute (in which over ZAR200 million of public money was spent irregularly on Jacob Zuma’s private house) should be implemented immediately … “all of them, without exception.” Vavi went on to say that criticism of Madonsela were “absolutely disgusting, to say the least”– Vavi in the Sunday Times 31/08/2014.

So what?

While the main structures of the ANC and its government attempt to close ranks around Jacob Zuma as the multiple scandals unfold and the threats against him grow, the hegemony is crumbling and the edges.

The ANC still has a comfortable electoral majority although as I have pointed out on many occasions, at least part of the electoral declines the ruling party experienced in May, especially in the sophisticated metropolitan areas of the economic heartland of Gauteng, have to do with perception of corruption and mismanagement at the top. It is difficult not to concur with the implicit meaning of the headline of Barney Mthombothi’s column in the Sunday Times yesterday which reads: “ANC courts its own destruction”.

We must consider that the cost of defending Zuma’s multiple infractions is starting to tell on the ANC (as it is telling on the party’s alliance with Cosatu).

I would reason that the ANC’s brand value is being seriously impacted by Jacob Zuma’s presidency and that, almost as a natural law, such a threat to value will call into being an attempt to defend the value by those who have the most to lose (other leaders and members of the ANC)

It’s the future, so I am guessing, but I think it is an even chance that Jacob Zuma will be moved into retirement within the next two years and that the official reasons will be related to his health.

(This added as I post these comments here: the above several paragraphs might be wishful thinking. If you want to see a well reasoned opinion that takes the opposite view, see the interesting Daily Maverick column by Ranjeni Munusami arguing that Zuma will see out his second term. I suspect that I just can’t live in a world where the thugs get away with it for ever (this paragraph was edited after posting – Ed)

The Ebola (haemorrhagic fever) epidemic ‘sweeping’ West Africa has killed approximately 1500 people and the first cases have been confirmed in Senegal, having up until now being confined in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

So what?

Ebola was first identified in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976 and outbreaks have been common in Central and Western Africa since that time. The disease is isolated and confined to countries with weak public health systems and high levels of poverty. In all the news coverage, the headlines tend to be more alarming than the content of the stories. There are various experimental drugs in trial (including one made jointly by GlaxoSmithKline and the US government which has achieved high levels of success) – Sunday Independent – 31/08/2014.

25/08/2014

Pay Back the Money … or we’ll huff and we’ll puff

Julius Malema and his cohorts in the National Assembly didn’t quite blow the House down on Thursday last week during President’s Question Time.

They disrupted parliament by demanding that Jacob Zuma pay back a portion of the costs of upgrades to his Nkandla home, as specified by the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. Their chanted refusal to accept the stock brushoff from Zuma and the poor management of the showdown by Baleka Mbete, Parliamentary Speaker (and ANC National Chairperson), is the leading edge of yet another storm that concerns Jacob Zuma’s integrity – and the ability of the constitutional mechanisms to hold him to account. (Here for a useful and interesting take on festivities.)

But political theatre becomes something more serious as the Public Protector and the ANC and its allies go head-to-head on the issue

Several Sunday papers reported yesterday ( 24/08/2014) that the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has sent a letter to Jacob Zuma criticising several aspects of his response to her Secure in Comfort report and specifically arguing that he (Zuma) did not have the constitutional right to set aside or review her findings or to allow Police Minister Thathi Nhleko to do so (in essence Zuma has asked Nhleko to determine what his – Zuma’s – financial obligations are with regard to the Nkandla security upgrades).

According to constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos Madonsela is well within her rights. “This is not legally controversial,” he says, quoted in today’s Business Day (25/08/2014). “The president is either receiving appallingly bad legal advice or he is wilfully abusing his power and thwarting the law to protect himself in order to unlawfully benefit financially from the state.”

Both the ANC and the SACP came out late yesterday afternoon strongly critical of Madonsela, arguing that she had overreached herself, especially as a parliamentary committee was currently dealing with the matter.

So what?

The clash in parliament on Thursday made a significant media impact and it seemed for a moment that the damage being done the ANC by the party endlessly having to defend its wayward leader could conceivably lead to some profound political realignment.

But that feeling was brief.

The EFF has 25 MPs in the National Assembly, to the ANC’s 249 and the DA’s 89. The chances are, the ANC in parliament will work out a set of rules that essentially disciplines the EFF (already MPs may be suspended for not more than 30 days and have their salary docked for the same period).

Jacob Zuma is a master at diverting crises like this into long (perhaps endless) processes that have a degree (or at least a semblance) of legitimacy and constitutionality. And there is a parliamentary process dealing with Nkandla underway and whether this process is an attempt to ‘set aside or review’ the Public Protector’s findings could be the subject of years’ of constitutional debate, such that many of the players will be long gone by the time it is resolved.

There is considerable stability in a system so tightly bound within itself through links of patronage and shared loyalties – although I suspect that when such a system eventually unwinds, it unwinds quickly and perhaps catastrophically.

Jacob Zuma is off for a week in Russia – to work and to rest – and the game will go on. “The visit will further strengthen the excellent bilateral relations with a view to consolidating and opening new avenues towards job creation, skills development, exchange and transfer of technology and trade and investment,” said the Department of International Relations yesterday.

There may be some future moment when the ANC could face electoral losses because of public perceptions about corruption of its leaders, but that day is still far enough ahead to not impact (in any meaningful way) upon behaviour in the present.

(So … that isn’t a direct contradiction on what Nic thought on September 1, but it is more than a little close. I strongly suspect it might be a biorhythm, or hormonal thing – Ed)

Julius Malema … how did he ‘Pay Back the Money’?

Julius Malema appears in court today to face questions about where he got the money to pay his R18 million tax bill. According to Rapport newspaper (24/08/2014) the South African Revenue Service (Sars), would ask for a two-month extension of Malema’s provisional sequestration to determine where he got the money to repay his tax debt each month. The newspaper reports that “impeccable sources” allege that “cigarette smuggler Andriano Mazzotti was helping to pay his tax debt” – as re-reported at the Independent Online 25/08/2014 – see here. (I don’t know the Afrikaans language Rapport newspaper well – it is part of Naspers’s Media24 stable – treat the claim with maximum caution). (Not because of Naspers of Media24 – for so are they all, all honourable men … the caution is purely because the claim is faintly outrageous, which doesn’t mean it’s not true – Ed)

So what?

While Julius Malema’s insistence that Jacob Zuma account to parliament is welcome, we should be careful to not lose our sense of discernment. Julius Malema himself has faced a long list of accusations similar to those he is making against the ANC and Jacob Zuma.

Land and wage reform – unintended consequences

Two interesting articles in the Sunday papers hint at some of the negative unintended consequences of attempts to protect the interests of the marginalised and vulnerable workers on South African farms.

Firstly, the Sunday Times (24/08/2014) has a colour piece titled “Good intentions pave the road to rural hell” in which the 1997 Extension of Security of Tenure Act is assessed as having “led to as many as a million farmworkers being evicted countrywide”.

Secondly, the Sunday Independent (24/08/2014) records an interesting discussion about the impact of ‘minimum wage’ determinations on employment. The article shares different views on the matter, but concludes that in SA agriculture “the impact was devastating: Employment fell from 819 048 jobs in 2002, just before the law came into effect, to 623 750 jobs in 2003 and continued to decline to 555 549 jobs in 2007 – a net loss of almost a third in five years.”

So what?

The ANC has signalled an urgent desire to ‘get serious’ about land reform. As we have mentioned previously ‘the land question’ seems to suggest to the ANC an answer to a host of social needs: employment, housing, food security, and black economic empowerment, to name only the most obvious. Racially unequal land ownership patterns (it is generally quoted that SA had 87% of land in white hands at the 1994 transition and that less than 8% has been redistributed since – see here) are also a driver of political dissatisfaction, perhaps helping feed the growth of the EFF and other ‘radical’ forces emerging in the society.

For now government is preparing a host of new legislation and regulation all the while signalling to commercial agriculture that it wants to be met half-way. There will probably be unintended consequences of government’s land reform and rural development programme (including negative impacts) but the lessons from the banking sector (for example with regard to the formulation of the National Credit Act) is that it is always a better idea for the private sector to go out and engage with government and attempt to shape legislation than it is to wait and deal with the future when it is a fait accompli.

21/08/2014

Mining, oil and gas sectors: legislative and regulatory drift and a scary audit

Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi didn’t calm nerves last week during his address to the third annual Mining Lekgotla. The minister is overseeing two significant regulatory processes causing anxiety in these sectors, namely a major audit of mining companies’ compliance with the 10 year targets of the Mining Charter and the signing into law of a bill amending the Mineral and Petroleum Development Act of 2002 (which the private sector thought it had essentially cautiously agreed to in exchange for it – the private sector – being consulted in detail about the regulations that would arise from the legislation).

With regard to the audit, Minister Ramathlodi said: “(w)hile the review process on the implementation of the Mining Charter is still under way, initial results suggest that whatever compliance we may have achieved, much more work still needs to be done” – Business Day -14/08/2014

With regard to the legislation the Minister said he had not been informed by the Presidency whether or when the bill would be signed into law. “There are legal teams that look at any legislation coming before the president and they advise him. When they do so we’ll act on that advice” – Business Day ibid. Download Minister Ramatlhodi’s full address at the DMR website here.

So what?

Firstly, the audit obliges the mining companies to meet various ‘transformation’ obligations and targets by 2014 e.g., 26% of the company must be owned, through “full shareholder rights”, by HDSA (Historically Disadvantaged South Africans) by the end of this year – as a precondition for the retention of the mining right. Go to www.dmr.gov.za to see the “Mining Charter” and the “Scorecard for the Broad-Based Socio-economic Empowerment Charter for the South African Mining Industry” to get a full view.

2014 is the year in which several definite obligations must be met by the mining companies and there is a degree of nervousness by investors and management as to how strict the audit will be, how much leeway the ministry will give and how severe the consequences of failure will be.

Purely the administrative aspects of the reporting process are enough to be a serious burden for smaller mining companies, according to Nic Dinham, Head of Resources at BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities

The apparent prevarication in signing the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act Amendment Bill, after months of careful negotiations between the department and the mining companies, has caused the industry to worry that deals struck and compromises made might be up for renegotiation. There was a general expectation that the constitutionality of the amendments would need to be tested and examined (especially government’s 20% proposed free-carry interest in all new exploration and production rights in the oil and gas sector). It appears to me that the delays are adding to a more generalised sense of uncertainty about the growing regulatory burden and costs associated with continuing to mine in South Africa.

Amcu set to go on the offensive at Num’s last toeholds in the Platinum sector – non-cyclical risk factors in the SA labour environment escalate

Nic Dinham (BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities Head of Resources referred to in a previous section) said yesterday that in the platinum operations where Amcu is not (yet) the major union (at several mines, but including those operations at Aquarius Platinum and Northam Platinum) there were significant indications that Amcu was close to recognition thresholds (specific to each company) and that it was reasonable to expect increased labour unrest at the particular operations and companies where Num was clinging to a majority.

“During the recent result presentations, several companies reported that operations previously dominated by Num are showing signs of losing ground to Amcu, especially in the Rustenburg areas”, said Dinham.

“This is the case at Aquarius Platinum as well as at Northam where Amcu membership has risen to 30% and 15% respectively, just short of both companies’ recognition levels. Clearly, this could be the harbinger of more labour storms to come. At the same time, only small numbers of workers in the existing Amcu fortresses switched to NUM after the end of the strike. So, despite all the rational arguments about the financial impact of the strike on labour, Amcu appear to have won the propaganda war with the mining industry” – Nic Dinham, 20/08/2014.

So what?

There are a number of important implications, not least of which is the confirmation (and deepening) of the implicit defection of mineworkers in the Platinum sector from a key ANC aligned union (Num) and the continued disintegration of previously powerful trade union federation and ANC ally, Cosatu.

In some ways this frees the ANC (and government) to decide on economic policy without having to kowtow to Cosatu, but it will also raise anxieties in the ruling party about the narrowing of its base – and a diminishment of its hegemony and moral authority.

None of that is necessarily a bad thing. It is my opinion that our legislative and regulatory environment has tended to suffer from a lack of clarity and focus as a result of the ANC attempting to keep a number of different legacy constituencies (and sectional interests) happy and on-board.

However, it is also worth noting that my general expectation of a deteriorating labour environment is strengthened by concerns about labour unrest driven by further contestation between Amcu and Num. This, together with a coming trial of strength in all (or most) Cosatu unions that will accompany the impending Numsa split out of Cosatu will be a strong, non-cyclical, driver of labour unrest for the next 18 months. Jeff Schultz (BNP Paribas Cadiz Economist) and I recently suggested that these strands driving labour unrest, along with what we expect will be a major confrontation that will accompany the lead-up to the expiry of the current 3-year public sector wage agreement in March 2015, will keep labour risks at elevated levels in the South African investment environment for at least another 18 months.

Cyril Ramaphosa – a hard week down at the Commission

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa last week faced an avalanche of criticism and heckling at the Farlam Commission (which is investigating the killing of 44 people at Marikana on and before August 16 2012 in the context of the protracted strike at Lonmin mines in the Rustenburg area at that time).

Cyril Ramaphosa was called to the commission to explain his actions in the lead-up to the Marikana killings. Ramaphosa was on the Lonmin board at the time and in an email to Lonmin managers he said: “(t)he terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.” In another email he urged then police minister Nathi Mthethwa to “take appropriate steps”. In both these cases I have added the emphasis.

At the Farlam Commission hecklers shouted “Blood on your hands” (City Press 11/08/2014) during Ramaphosa’s cross-examination. Hecklers wore T-shirts with several different slogans criticising Ramaphosa’s wealth, for example one showed a buffalo in reference to the fact that Ramaphosa bid – unsuccessfully as it turned out – R19.5 million for a buffalo cow and her calf at a wildlife auction a month after the Marikana killings in 2012.

So what?

There is a high level of speculation as to whether Cyril Ramaphosa will succeed Jacob Zuma as president (when the current presidential term expires in 2019 or at some earlier date due to Jacob Zuma’s purported ill health.) There appears to me to be a widespread assumption in the financial markets that Cyril Ramaphosa, as an experienced businessman and an experienced negotiator and conciliator who was central to easing the transition at Codesa 1 and 2 in the early 90s, would be more sensitive to the needs of the private sector, more compliant with global capital markets and, generally, run a cleaner and more efficient ship.

Implicit in that list of attributes is the person who Ramaphosa would be cleaner than, more conciliatory than, more understanding of private sector needs than, is Jacob Zuma. It is impossible to know either that Ramaphosa really has such attributes relative to Zuma or that it is really or primarily those attributes that make Ramaphosa a more attractive choice than Zuma for the financial markets … or, in fact, whether the ‘financial markets’ really makes these kinds of distinctions.

It is my impression that Jacob Zuma’s rise to power and performance as president has been accompanied (and in several cases directly caused) increased political risks associated with investing in the country. Almost any successor would probably be welcomed by the markets. However we would be cautious about seeing Ramaphosa as the knight in shining armour. He is badly damaged by his link to the Marikana killings (unfair as that may be) and he has not yet established a significant constituency within the ANC. The fact that he is a rich man can play both ways; it gives him resources to build his case but it makes him vulnerable to accusations of conspicuous consumption and being out of touch with common people. It is also inescapably true that his wealth has been accumulated more as a result of ‘empowerment deals’, the accumulation of large slices of equity, rather than the involvement in any of the underlying activities (mining, banking, health care etc).

More than anything we must keep front of mind that much ANC policy and politics is determined in the forums of the party – long in advance of such policies and politics becoming law and regulation. The particular character of leaders makes a difference, but in the South African case, not as big a difference as it might elsewhere.

The noise around land reform is (partly) bluster designed to get commercial agriculture to act voluntarily

Urging Commercial farmers to take voluntary steps ‘advancing the transformation project in the agriculture sector’, ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said “change that is imposed is more painful” – Business Day 14/08/2014. Mantashe told attendees at a conference on land reform and food production that land reform was necessary if South Africa was to deal with the “ugly past of racial land dispossession of black people” and that farmers must never allow themselves “to be victims of change” – Business Day ibid.

So what?

We previously described in some detail some of the legislative initiatives around land reform and one of the points we made about assessing the risks associated with the land reform initiative is reinforced by Gwede Mantashe’s choice of words.

The ANC feels keenly its failure to successfully complete a significant process of land reform and redress – and is, in part, being punished for that failure by the (still slight) electoral traction achieved by the ostensibly more radical Economic Freedom Fighters on their debut in the general election on May 7 2014.

However, the ANC feels, at least as keenly, the threats to investment that would result if property rights were ever threatened by an unruly and uncertain ‘land reform’ process à la Zimbabwe.

Commercial farming does not have the handy (from the ANC’s point of view) equivalent to the mining sector’s mineral rights to attach to a number of ‘transformation’ objectives. The ANC would be extremely cautious about bluntly attaching a ‘licence to farm’ (or in fact a ‘licence to operate any business’) directly to ‘transformation objectives’. There is a line beyond which such rights and obligations could constitute a nationalisation in fact and might be both unconstitutional and, certainly, a serious barrier to future investment.

Thus the ANC, in the form of its secretary general, is snapping at the heels of domestic commercial agriculture, attempting to herd it towards the ‘transformation’ objective, putting the argument that this is the national good, but hinting that a bite on the ankle could be the laggard’s reward. It is an open question as to whether farmers would respond to such incentives with greater compliance or with resistance, both covert and overt. However, for now, we think the ANC’s (and therefore government’s) land reform bark is worse than its bite.

Bits and pieces

Jacob Zuma put out a report last week which he and his spokespeople claim is a satisfactory response to the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s, “Secure in Comfort” report into the upgrades to the President’s private Nkandla residence in which she finds several faults with the President’s actions and inactions. The delay, over many months, of a response from Jacob Zuma to Thuli Madonsela was ostensibly as a result of him (Zuma) awaiting a report from the Special Investigating Unit. However, on Friday a spokesperson for the Public Protector said Zuma’s report was not a response, adequate or otherwise, to Secure in Comfort. ““That means a document that comments on the public protector’s report or indicates action taken or to be taken to implement remedial action in compliance with section 3(5) of the Executive Members Ethics Act must still be submitted to Parliament by the president” – my emphasis added.

Jacob Zuma’s team is preparing to hang expense overruns and incorrect categorisation of some items as ‘security related’ on Jacob Zuma’s architect, Minenhle Makhanya. The Mail and Guardian reports that the “Special Investigating Unit has lodged a R155-million claim against Makhanya” – 15/08/2014.

And in other news Bruce Koloane, the former chief of state protocol who was shouldered with the blame for the landing of a large private wedding party at a secure military base by the close Zuma allies and business partners the Gupta brothers and family last year, was nominated by Jacob Zuma as Ambassador to The Hague. In August last year, Koloane pleaded guilty to all charges relating to his involvement in authorising the controversial landing of the jet.

It’s not (just) idle mischief putting these bullets together. If the President’s own actions around his accumulation of personal assets and special favours to his friends can impact on the formal judicial, disciplinary and constitutional oversight functions, if his party can go to extreme lengths to protect him from the consequences of his actions in accumulating personal wealth and influence, it is unlikely that private companies will be trustful of, or willingly and enthusiastically compliant with, the ‘transformation’ agenda emerging from the state, government and party he leads. Ultimately the private sector needs to believe that the value of its various social obligations ends up benefiting those who need the assistance the most. This is the price the private sector seems prepared to pay for stability and growth. Any sense that the public purse is hijacked or that equity transfers and affirmative action obligations have become a kind of asset that can be hoarded and dispensed as patronage by the politically powerful will cause the ‘transformation’ objective – and much else – to fail.

11/08/2014

‘Cabinet leaning to break-up Eskom’ – Business Day 05/08/2014 … I would be extremely surprised

Business Day reported that the idea of breaking up Eskom and privatising some of its power stations “is starting to gain traction in government circles, as a team of cabinet ministers and government officials seeks ways to alleviate the company’s financial crisis and restructure its business” – Business Day 05/08/2014.

The governing ANC’s alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) vowed the next day to fight any such privatisation “to the bitter end” arguing that electricity price inflation, driven by the ‘commercialisation’ of the utility in the first place, was “one of the key constraints” on economic growth and an important reason South Africa “is not creating decent jobs the country so desperately needs” (catch the full August 6 Cosatu statement here.)

On the same day Lynne Brown, the Minister of Public Enterprises, said “I want to indicate that there is a portfolio of options for the interministerial task team to consider. To my knowledge Cabinet has not discussed the matter of privatisation and there is no need to unnecessarily raise temperatures around this matter” – City Press Online, 06/08/2014. The ‘task team’ to which she refers was described (in the same story) as “representing energy, public enterprises and the treasury” and further, that the findings of the team had not yet been made public.

So what?

This is, supposedly, a defining issue for the ruling faction of the ANC and its allies in Cosatu and the SACP. Much of the motivation for backing Jacob Zuma (and ousting Thabo Mbeki) was – apparently – that Mbeki’s policies were a species of Thatcherism (especially the plan to privatise the major state utilities). The alliance backing Jacob Zuma defined its historical mission as the combating of this “1996 class project”, a catch-all phrase for neoliberalism, fiscal rectitude and the ‘Washington Consensus’.

It might well be true that the breaking up and privatisation of Eskom is an urgent necessity – or even a precondition for recovery from our dire economic state – but it is a political nonstarter, requiring the complete breakup of the alliance of groups that hold power, and is therefore vanishingly unlikely to happen, even symbolically.

National Prosecuting Authority in free fall and intelligence services are extensively deployed on behalf of senior politicians and criminals – and the storm is beginning to batter against the South African Revenue Service – this is as serious and urgent as it is confusing and complicated

There is an on-going meltdown at the heart of the criminal justice system which is increasing risks in doing business with, or in, the areas administered by the South African state.

Here are only a few of the most recent visible features of the (complex and confusing) disintegration:

Jacob Zuma has asked the National Director of Public Prosecutions Mxolisi Nxasana to give reasons why he should not be suspended. The apparent motivation is that Nxasana has problems associated with his security clearance (owing to his brushes with the law, including a murder charge, when he was a younger man). However, almost all the coverage and analysis suggests that the ‘real reason’ is Nxasana has pursued investigations of key Zuma allies in the NPA and Crime Intelligence Division of the South African Police Service and his (Nxasana’s) actions threaten to lead, eventually, to fraud and corruption charges being reinstated against Jacob Zuma.

Award winning journalist Mzilikazi wa Africa published his memoir last week which includes a detailed account of how Jacob Zuma and his allies vigorously undermined the credibility of the first National Director of Public Persecutions Bulelani Ngcuka by spreading the false information that he (Ngcuka) was an apartheid spy.(See an interesting examination of this thread from Business Day 07/08/2014 here.) In here is the source code of much of the chaos in the prosecuting authority and intelligence service: Bulelani Ngcuka led the original investigation into the allegations of fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering against the then Deputy President Zuma, concluding that there was “prima facie” evidence that Zuma was guilty, but not enough to win in court – a statement to which Zuma, not unreasonably, strongly objected.

“Sex, SARS and rogue spies” announced the front page headline in City Press yesterday (10/08/2014). The accompanying stories allege that senior SARS official, Johan van Loggenberg, has been the subject of a ‘honey trap’ operation by the State Security Agency “Special Operations Unit”. The story is Byzantine, but the important bit is the detailed allegation that the secret spy unit operating against van Loggenberg has also been used to discredit and smear a ‘anti-Zuma’ camp in the NPA and in Crime Intelligence. Bizarrely, the Special Operations Unit supposedly includes drug dealer Glen Agliotti. (Read some of this story here and here … if you have the time or the patience.)

So what?

This level of political and criminal infiltration into key state institutions and functions, especially of the security services, the prosecuting authority and the South African Revenue Service raises real questions about judicial, regulatory and legislative certainty in the operating and investment environment. Uncertainty about the application of law, the integrity of the criminal justice system and the functioning of the revenue service must all be considered by anyone wanting to invest in South Africa or in assets regulated by South African institutions of state and law. Frankly, given the deep connections between the instability in these key sectors of the South Africa state and the rise to power of Jacob Zuma I am pessimistic that we have the capacity to fix this problem while the current administration is still in power.

The National Prosecuting Authority has appointed highly respected retired Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob to head an inquiry, or ‘fact finding mission’ into its dysfunctional state. Unfortunately Yacoob almost immediately (on Thursday last week while speaking at a workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand) happened to mention that he would have “set aside” the judgement that found Jacob Zuma not guilty of rape in 2006, because he would have put less emphasis on the alleged victim’s sexual history – see here. An outraged African National Congress said it learned of Yacoob’s comments “with shock and dismay” saying they “opened old wounds” and were “an attack on principles of our jurisprudence and the judiciary.” Yacoob attempted to clarify his comments here but either way he is no longer likely to be the instrument that cleans up the National Prosecuting Authority.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will have to explain today at the Marikana Commission what he meant when emailed other senior Lonmin managers just before the August 12 2012 killing of 34 striking mineworkers at Marikana and said: “(t)he terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.” In another email he urged then police minister Nathi Mthethwa to “take appropriate steps”.

So what?

It is unlikely that the Commission will find anything untoward in Rampahosa’s messages. He was, after all, doing nothing other than responding to the growing violence of the strikers and Lonmin’s increasing anxiety about the strike. We are of the view that there is some political harm done Ramaphosa by his identification with mine management and government – and the police killing of the 34 mineworkers. There is a considerable degree of unease within the broad structures of the ANC and the electorate about the Marikana killings. The ANC is obliged to stand with its Deputy President on this matter, but it can’t be comfortable. This will play against Ramaphosa (although perhaps not decisively) in the coming succession contest in the ANC.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Chairwoman of the African Union, fresh from pride of place at the US-Africa summit in Washington announced yesterday that she was undecided as to whether to stand for a second term in the AU (her current term expires in 2014 2016) This is inevitably raising questions about whether she will compete with Ramaphosa to succeed Jacob Zuma as president of the country.

So what?

She is in the running – and is clean and capable. She is perhaps more of an insider in the ANC’s power elite than Cyril Ramaphosa and her winning this race might mean (unwelcome) continuities with the current administration. It’s too early to call it one way or another, but the ANC Women’s League has indicated that it could back Dlamini-Zuma (or Baleka Mbete) while the Gauteng ANC has indicated it could back Ramaphosa. Officially succession would only take place after elections in 2019, but there are constant rumours that Jacob Zuma might want to retire early (or be forced to do so due to failing health). An early retirement of Jacob Zuma would probably be a significant positive for perceptions about South African political risk, but the specific circumstances of such a move would determine whether it would, in fact, be positive, negative or natural.

Listening to the EFF be the rock against which Zuma’s blithe refusal to account finally dashed itself yesterday I felt briefly elated.

Gangsters! Bashi-bazouks! Yes, PAY BACK THE MONEY! PAY BACK THE MONEY! Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles!

But after a moment’s reflection I pulled myself, by the ear, back into the vehicle.

“You irresponsible old twit!” I said, my mind drifting back to this blog post from August 24 2010:

Waiting for a saviour to rise from these streets*

Just when all hope flees, as the last good politician still within government leaves his/her post to join the feeding frenzy and as the last decent officials trying to do a public service throw up their hands in disgust; and as the striking workers blockade the last functional HIV/AIDS clinic and trash the streets again; and as the broken bits of the Ruling Alliance go for the kill in their eye gouging, groin stamping gutter fight – just as all hope flees, whose silhouette is it that appears, backlit and heroic, flying in low over the horizon?

“Franco”: General Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde Salgado Pardo de Andrade – and yes, he did keep his armies up his sleevies

Is it a plane?

Is it a bird?

No, it’s … hmm, I’m not really sure.

When things are going as badly wrong as they are going for us, the person to look out for is the one who seems to have been sent by history itself as the solution to all of our problems.

I am not suggesting, as my old Granny used to say: don’t worry, cometh the moment, cometh the man or all’s well that ends well. I am suggesting the very opposite.

This is more of a warning to be careful about decisions we make when we are desperate than it is anything else.

Societies, political parties and whole nations are uniquely vulnerable at times like these. Our desperate need is for someone who can raise an anti-corruption army, is prepared to control the unions, able to fix service delivery and able to make the difficult decisions that will allow job rich economic growth.

The darker and more dire things become – and goodness knows they are as dark and dire as anyone can remember – the stronger our wish fulfilment drive becomes.

Where is the good-looking one, with the strong jaw and the easy, comforting manner, and the very firm but gentle eye and the plan and the promise and the words – and the record, or at least one you can, in your desperation, convince yourself of?

This is the moment in which nice Germans welcomed Adolf Hitler and Spaniards General Franco. King Constantine II of Greece inducted the awful “Regime of the Colonels” in 1967 saying he was “certain they had acted in order to save the country” and there was a (brief) Argentinian sigh of relief when Brigadier-General Jorge Videla overthrew the execrable, incompetent and authoritarian regime of “Evita” – as popular culture has dubbed Isabel Martínez de Perón.

I am not suggesting that a fascist opportunist and criminal is about to present him or herself as the saviour from our woes – or that things are so bad that we risk losing our judgement and welcoming him/her into the stockade. Well, not yet.

But explicitly and implicitly various political factions and individuals have presented themselves as alternatives, and the solution to our current problems.

There’s Zwelinzima Vavi – and whatever kind of workerist paradise he represents – who heroically criticised the media appeals tribunal and has laid about himself with a stout cudgel at all the worst of the cabinet ministers and officials trying to stuff the last tasty bits of the family roast into their distended bellies. And he’s available next year.

Deputy Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula suggested (of criminals) we should “shoot the bastards!” and in so doing presents a kind of law-and-order (and anti-communist) alternative, clearly being supported by the ANC Youth League and tenderpreneurs everywhere.

Lindiwe Sisulu dresses nicely and would be excellent if we ever panicked enough to need a kind of Cleopatra/Boadicea empress to save us.

Tokyo Sexwale is getting the kind of press that suggests he is an effective anti-corruption campaigner and an excellent Minister of Human Settlements i.e. he’s clean and gives good service delivery – and he’s bright, presentable, charming, good-looking and available – very available.

(This added as an afterthought: don’t discount Kgalema Motlanthe as a sort of leftish compromise that we have grown used to and, obviously, Mathews Phosa with his charming Afrikaans poetry and his friendly demeanour and his market friendly comments and his bitter struggle with ANC leader and communist Gwede Mantashe. Also consider a scenario, one I discuss elsewhere, where none of the contending factions achieves dominance and everyone agrees to stick with the burdensome incumbent … all is still possible.)

The National General Council of the African National Congress (to be held in Durban from 20 – 24 September) will reveal the main factions and their key representatives for leadership. The last NGC resulted in a rebellion against Mbeki and foretold his rout at Polokwane. This one is likely to be as instructive.

The point I wish to make here is a simple one. Those who appear to offer solutions must be judged in terms of who they are, what they have done and what they really represent. Just because we are in trouble does not mean we can afford to lose our critical faculties. My long gone Granny would have had two more things to say on the subject: don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, and don’t jump from the frying pan into the fire.

* The title of this post comes from the glorious “Thunder Road” by the inimitable Bruce Springsteen (it doesn’t really fit the story … but I really love the song:

You can hide `neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a saviour to rise from these streets
Well now Im no hero
That’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now?

The only ray of light so far (I am watching on eNCA) was a brief interview with Floyd Shivambu who suggested it should be a ‘state of the resignation address’ … that if the President couldn’t make it to the Cabinet Lekgotla ‘then it would be best for him to just come here to explain that he is just too old and tired and to say goodbye’ – or words to that effect.

I thought I would use the time to publish some bits and pieces that I have sent to my clients over the last week.

The winter of our discontent – as the labour relations cycle meets a secular trend

Every year at this time South Africa is engulfed in strikes as annual wage agreements are traditionally renegotiated in several sectors of the economy. Every year analysts and journalists pontificate widely about the dire labour relations conditions – and the gloom deepens because this all takes place in winter.

Three factors this year are probably going to make the outlook more negative and threatening.

Firstly, the post national election winter has, since 1994, been characterised by spikes in service delivery protests. The causes of this phenomenon are not fully understood, but it is likely that:

voters confronting a hostile winter and declining services levels – so soon after being promised the earth by politicians – are likely to be unsettled;

local politicians who failed to make party lists begin mobilising factional support, perhaps to stand as candidates in 2016 local government elections, perhaps to discredit those whose positions they covet.

Secondly, the platinum strike is being driven by a number of ‘political’ factors – as discussed previously.

Thirdly Numsa is showing clear signs that its political aspirations are, as we predicted, going to drive deeper and more robust strikes and labour unrest. One sign is the growing violence as Numsa attempts to widen its action at the Ngqura container terminal in the Coega Industrial Development Zone in Port Elizabeth. The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (a Cosatu union) is opposing the Numsa strike and is calling for its members to stay at work at the Transnet facility. However, both Transnet and Satawu were quoted on radio (SAFM 20h00 news broadcast 08/06/2014) as decrying the burning of houses and cars of the workers who were at work. The SATAWU spokesperson warned that the situation had similar dynamics to those that were present in the platinum sector in 2012 – that this ‘is just like what happened with Amcu (same broadcast).

Additionally, Numsa is preparing to lead 220,000 workers out on strike from the metals and engineering sector next month. “The bargaining negotiations have spectacularly failed to produce the desired outcomes as expected by the thousands of our members in the sector,” spokesman Castro Ngobese said in a statement quoted in The Herald (5/06/2014). Numsa’s core demands includes a 15% pay rise and a one-year bargaining agreement, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa, which represents 23 employer associations) has offered an inflation-linked increase of 6.1 percent.

So what?

This is the cycle meeting the secular trend, with each driving the other deeper than either would have been driven ordinarily. Numsa is in the process of breaking away from Cosatu and is beginning to vigorously compete with other Cosatu unions in overlapping sectors (container terminals, the big electricity generation projects and down and upstream mining and metallurgy operations). This is, at least partly, about Numsa preparing to set up a ‘left’ party to compete for votes in the future. Comparable (but not identical) dynamics are driving the platinum strike. A winter with ‘normally’ increased social and industrial unrest will probably become unusually bleak and unwelcoming in the months ahead. The impact on GDP growth and on the possibility of ratings downgrades are both important considerations.

X Rated

Both Fitch and Standard & Poor made references on Friday (13/06/2014) to increased political risk when they changed their views on the South African government’s willingness and ability to pay the sovereign debt.

Fitch revised the outlook for South Africa to negative from stable and affirmed the country’s long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings at BBB and BBB+ respectively. S&P downgraded both the country’s local and foreign currency ratings by one notch from A- to BBB+ and BBB to BBB- respectively, but moved its outlook negative to stable. None of this is a catastrophe but of interest to us here is the central role of ‘politics’ in the given reasons for both Fitch’s and S&P’s changes.

Fitch says it most baldly in the press release announcing the change in outlook (my emphasis added):

“Following its election victory in May with 62% of the vote, the African National Congress government faces a challenging task to raise the country’s growth rate and improve social conditions, which has been made more difficult by the weaker growth performance and deteriorating trends in governance and corruption. This will require an acceleration of structural reforms, such as those set out in the comprehensive National Development Plan (NDP). In Fitch’s view, the track record of some key ministerial appointments and shortcomings in administrative capacity mean this is subject to downside risks.”

Standard and Poor’s downgrade was similarly motivated but adds some additional concerns:

“While we think that President Jacob Zuma’s newly elected administration will continue the policies of his first administration, which controlled fiscal expenditure and fostered broadly stable prices, we do not believe it will manage to undertake major labor or other economic reforms that will significantly boost GDP growth”.

My initial take on the new Cabinet is supportive of these motivations.

In addition both agencies made extensive reference to the negative industrial relations environment – and the negative impacts on GDP growth and government revenues. There is a significant political dimension driving industrial unrest – as I have argued above.

So what?

The validity of the actual ratings and ratings outlook of these agencies is much disputed[1] but the issues they use to motivate their views are interesting because they (the agencies) are cautious; clinging to a sort of ‘average view’ of investors. So if political criticism makes its way into the text (as is the case in both these instances) we are obliged to consider that these may represent, or may come to represent, a general view in markets.

South Africa has a small open economy and liquid financial markets and the difference that policy makers can make to economic outcomes is limited. But even within those limitations too many political choices (certain cabinet appointments, corruption controls, delivery performance and the honest brokering of labour contestation) are either not helping or are actively negative.

[1]No-one could have failed to notice the excoriating criticism of the credit rating agencies (CRAs) after their generalised failure to accurately assess the risks associated with the collateralised debt obligations allegedly because they were mostly issued by the CRAs biggest paying clients! However, it is the opposite with sovereigns: “It has also been suggested that the credit agencies are conflicted in assigning sovereign credit ratings since they have a political incentive to show they do not need stricter regulation by being overly critical in their assessment of governments they regulate.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency (accessed 13h56 16/06/2014.

The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions

I dealt with this issue last week, but it is making bigger and more anxiety provoking headlines than ever.

So what

The NDPP was drawn into the fight between Mbeki and Zuma and since that time has limped along to the rhythm of one or other faction aligned to competing interests within the ANC seizing or losing power in the institution. This is not a situation in which one could safely choose one set of ‘good guys’ and back them against another set of ‘bad guys’. The situation is complex but relates primarily to the on-going struggle to either ensure that certain senior political leaders are brought to justice or to ensure that they are not.

The NDPP is one of the most important institutions of the justice system, and without certainty and stability here it is impossible to have certainty about the operating environment for any business in the country. This is a serious problem and it appears to be getting worse under the current administration.

Platinum Strike

(This is a bit dated, but you might be interested in my rude remarks about the new minister.)

“Government is ready to wash its hands of the protracted wage strike by platinum mineworkers in Rustenburg” according to the Sunday Independent 08/06/2014. Mines minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi threatened to pull out his inter-ministerial task team if a settlement was not reached at the last scheduled government facilitated meeting, which is due to take place today.

In addition, a formal ANC statement delivered by Gwede Mantashe at a press conference in Luthuli House in Johannesburg last night after the ANC weekend lekgotla[1] characterised the strike in a way that seemed to destroy the remote possibility that Ramatlhodi could have made a difference anyway:

“The articulation of AMCU position by white foreign nationals, signalling interest of the foreign forces in the distabilisation (sic) of our economy.

The direct participation of EFF in the negotiations, and thus collaboration with the foreign forces.

These two factors led the lekgotla into cautioning the Ministry of Mineral Resources in handling the facilitation with care. There were questions about the role of the state in workplace disputes where there are clear rules guiding it.”

This statement is interesting precisely because it borders on the bizarre

So what

The ANC statement indicates shows just why the new ANC minister cannot be an honest or effective broker in the negotiation – and it is therefore unsurprising that he is preparing to withdraw his team. The ANC is compelled to believe that this strike is only not ‘negotiable’ in the normal manner because the real issues driving it are political and not about wages at all. The ANC might be correct about the strike being ‘political’ but the party itself is culpable of having politicised the strike by attempting to defend its Num ally against the vigorously growing Amcu, by alienating workers by characterising their union as ‘vigilantes’ and by the ‘Marikana massacre itself.’ s – There was never any real possibility of this government mediating between the parties or influencing the outcome.

Concerns about property rights

The South African Institute of Race Relations and AfriBusiness (AfriSake) have recently released warnings about property rights in South Africa. A proper assessment of these warning would require specialist legal opinions, but our own assumptions have long been that the South African Constitution provides adequate protections for private property (see here) and the ANC government is unlikely to risk fiddling with these principles.

However it seems to be a basic due diligence requirement to keep an eye on the risk – perhaps more so since Jacob Zuma spelled out at his Cabinet announcement (reiterating many recent ANC and SACP statements) that we are entering a “more radical” phase of economic transformation.

With this is mind, we reproduce the basic summary of legal concerns AfriBusiness and the South African Institute of Race Relations have raised in their research (note that below is a direct quote from the AfriBusiness statement linked above):

The National Development Plan has as its aim the transfer of 20% of the agricultural land in a district to black recipients, at only 50% of the value as determined by the state (in terms of the Property Valuation Bill).

The verdict of the Constitutional Court in April 2013 in the case of AgriSA v the Minister of Minerals and Energy distinguishes between “deprivation” and “expropriation”. After the verdict the state is able to dispossess and redistribute property, as long as the state does not assume ownership of the property and act (sic) only as custodian.

The Green Paper on Land Reform aims a radical redesign of property rights, with inter alia a type of freehold on land which will drastically limit the rights of owners. Within this context a Land Management Commission is proposed, which will have discretionary powers regarding disputes over title deeds.

The policy proposal by the Minister of Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, for “Strengthening the rights of workers working the land” aims to transfer 50% of the land to the workers, commensurate with their term of service. No compensation will be paid to the owner.

The Expropriation Bill poses that expropriation may be used for the public interest and public goal. The Bill is not only applicable to land but will cover all types of property. Public interest and public goal are determined in an ad hoc manner and both have restitution as aim.

The Promotion and Protection of Investment Bill allows state intervention in investment processes. The Bill explicitly provides for expropriation at less than market value. All in the name of so-called restitution. Any property used for commercial purposes is targeted by the Bill.

The Infrastructure Development Bill aims to eliminate so-called inequalities in infrastructure. The Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission is granted the authority to expropriate in the public interest and for the public goal.

The Spatial Planning and Management of Land Use Act aims at centralized planning of land ownership. It proposed so-called spatial justice by integrating low and high cost housing in residential developments.

The Extension of the Security of Tenure Amendment Bill expands the rights of occupants and their dependents. Evictions are strictly controlled and the Amendment Bill means a significant loss in control over property.

The Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill creates further political and economic uncertainty regarding the future of property rights.

The Rental Housing Amendment Bill proposes stricter regulation of the rental property market. Rental Tribunals will be established to hear disputes and will be able to determine increases in rent.

The National Water Amendment Bill and Policy Review prohibits the trading of water rights and proposes a use-it-or-lose-it principle for water rights. Equality (including racial transformation) becomes the criterium (sic) for the allocation and re-allocation of water rights.

Consume that with the requisite amount of salt but keep an eye on the detail.

[1]Sesotho loan word meaning court or community council meeting; used in the South African context a “lekgotla is a meeting called by government, Cabinet or the ANC to discuss strategy planning”. Wikipedia accessed 04h30 09/06/2014.

But anyway … here are the 4 most egregious examples of … of just general political awfulness from the last week’s political news:

1. Chancellor House gets another slice of the Eskom pie – and says: F*%& you, we can do what we like

The Weekend Witness (also City Press 27/04/2014) reports that Chancellor House, an investment arm of the ANC, has begun the purchase of Swiss-owned Pfisterer, a manufacturer of electrification components. Pfisterer is a major Eskom supplier and has a R550 million contract with the state owned power utility. The report alleges that Chancellor House will invest R34 million in a transaction that gives it immediate control of 49% ofPfisterer , and that Chancellor House will buy out the remainder over the next 18 months. Chancellor House’s Mamatho Netsianda told City Press: “If Chancellor House invests, it is not a crime. Why are you bothering me? We didn’t break any law. You don’t have a job to do. I have a job.” Hmm, nice work if you can get it.

2. State nuclear corporation channels public money to the ANC – and is about to adjudicate the biggest public tender in South African history

The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), a wholly state owned entity recently paid R76 000.00 for seats at an ANC fundraising dinner. This quote from an unidentified board member of Necsa from the Sunday Times’s (26/04/2014) story: “We get money from government. How can we use it to fund the ANC?”

The deadly serious point of the article is that Necsa will soon be adjudicating bids for the R1-trillion nuclear build programme, the biggest public sector contract in the country’s history.

The country is still reeling from the corroding effects of the R30-billion Strategic Defence Acquisition finalised in 1999. Then deputy president Jacob Zuma was charged on various counts of racketeering, money laundering, corruption and fraud in the wake of the successful prosecution of his then financial advisor Shabir Shaik for charges that included the soliciting of a R500 000 (per annum) bribe for Jacob Zuma from a leading defence contractor.

3. No parliamentary scrutiny of Nkandla

The African National Congress yesterday quashed the parliamentary committee established to scrutinise President Jacob Zuma’s responses to the Public Protector’s findings on the R246-million upgrade to the Nkandla homestead. Opposition parties were furious, claiming ANC members of the committee were “submitting to the will of the (ANC) headquarters, Luthuli House, rather than following the oath they made to uphold the constitution, part of which was to keep the executive accountable.” Committee chairman Cedric Frolick said the next Parliament could resurrect the issue, a point non-ANC members of the committee felt was unlikely and certainly not guaranteed – Business Day 29/04/2014

This particular story gets worse: a key ANC member of the now disbanded committee said during a march in support of Jacob Zuma over the weekend that Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, “is not our god”, regardless of being named as one of the world’s top 100 most influential people by Time magazine. “They can praise her good work, which is advancing the political agenda of the DA … We still reserve our right to expose that she is acting more as a politician and that she has brought that office into disrepute.” (City Press 27/04/2014) … which rather explains why the ANC has sunk the committee which was the last opportunity for government and the ruling party to acknowledge mistakes and culpability around the Nkandla upgrade. It is widely reported that the ANC is encountering, along its election trail, significant and harsh criticism from its own electorate about the Nkandla issue in all provinces except Kwazulu-Natal.

4. Sadtu accused of running jobs for cash racket

City Press published an exposé of allegations that the South African Democratic Teachers Union, a key Cosatu affiliate, had run a “promotions and appointments for cash” racket that “led to scores of illegal appointments” across the country – and at least one murder of a principal (City Press 27/04/2014). The article describes several situations in which principals were threatened with death to leave their jobs to make way for someone who has paid the R30 000.00 to occupy the job. The article implicates some Cosatu, Education Department and ANC officials and leaders in the scam. “On Tuesday, Mfundi Sibiya (54) the Kwazulu-Natal education’s department Ugu (lower South Coast) district director, two principals and an ANC ward councillor were granted bail … (after) allegedly ordering the murder of Nyon’emhlope Primary School principal Nkosinathi Zondi (46) … shot five times, allegedly by hitmen Andile Zulu and Lungisani Makhoba …)”.

The failing South African education system is an important constraint to South African economic growth, and a key component of this failure is Sadtu’s success in thwarting attempts by governments to properly assess and grade teachers and to link advancement to performance. The exposé in City Press suggests (but, it needs to be noted, does not prove) how deep and pathological is the impact of Cosatu’s Sadtu union on the failure of the system.

Stories that didn’t make the cut … because this whole exercise was starting to make me nauseous

Journalist Nickolaus Bauer photographing the handing out of ANC T-shirts from a traffic police vehicle, and then having his pictures forcibly deleted by a member of the SAPS VIP protections services.

Journalist Max du Preez’s accusation that Jacob Zuma “is using every trick he used while being head of intelligence for the ANC in exile in Angola and Zambia”. That he has “plunged the ANC back into its darkest era when commanders in exile issued the orders and cadres even remotely suspected of being hesitant or questioning were victimised, even jailed, tortured and executed.” Further that “the criminal justice system was perverted and abused and the powerful State Security Agency employed to make sure Zuma and his inner circle stay in power.” Catch the article here.

The allegation that emergency parcels (food, toiletries and blankets from the SA Social Security Agency) are being dished out at a certain political party’s rallies – no guesses, this is getting ridiculous. The allegations have been made to the Public Protector. Hmm what is it that MP Buti Manemela said? Oh yes: the Public Protector is “advancing the political agenda of the DA”.

It’s the 1st of April and I have already seen that Helen Zille has accepted an ‘elecnomination‘ to spend two weeks living in Khayelitsha, surviving on the minimum wage and using a bucket toilet. Good for her, I say.

In other news the DA has announced that the Western Cape government it is going to upgrade Zille’s private residence in Cape Town. They plan to spend R20 million, but have wisely put aside R246 million in case of overruns. Nothing wrong with that … as we have seen elsewhere.

In entirely unrelated news the Sunday Independent carried a story about some polling apparently undertaken by the legendary Stan Greenberg on behalf of the DA.

Just as an aside: the headline in the Sunday Indepent calls Greenberg the “De Niro of politics”.

This is a picture of Stan Greenberg:

This is a picture of Robert De Niro:

Oh yes, now I get it. They are both white men, over a certain age …. (oh leave it alone! It’s not important, why don’t you just let it go? And anyway maybe there is a joke here you just don’t get – Ed)

Hmm, okay, sorry …

The DA polling was something of an antidote to an Ipsos poll commissioned by the Sunday Times and published a week earlier.

First the antidote from Stan, the DA and their various minions:

Then the Sunday Times Ipsos poll published March 22:

I am not, actually, saying treat this sort of thing with the same caution as you would treat an April Fool’s story. Both the pollsters have defensible and explicable methodologies … but clearly they can’t both be right.

In general I treat the polling with a degree of caution. Results are often leaked or announced with the intention of impacting on the final outcomes (by, for example, scaring voters and supporters into getting out to the voting booths or by bolstering the flagging energies of party workers).

I have used, as a sort of deductive shorthand, a ‘below 60 percent’ versus an ‘above 60 percent’ for the ANC as an indicator of a ‘danger zone’ for Jacob Zuma.

Instinctively I think the ANC will lose votes because of the leader’s breathtakingly cavalier attitude to public money and resources. The alternative would be for me to believe things about the average South African voter that I would feel uncomfortable about admitting in public. The average ANC member voted for Jacob Zuma as president of the party at both Polokwane and Mangaung … so there is nothing I need to say about that.

So … as part of my weekly review of SA politics yesterday morning I tried to collate some of the responses to the Nkandla Report with the specific intention of using these as an heuristic tool to gain some deeper insight into what is going on.

That’s just a fancy way of saying that when I am unsure of what is going on then I look around at the responses of people I suspect do know what is happening and try and extrapolate from that a greater level of insight i.e. I am using the responses as a heuristic tool … although as you will see in the link ‘heuristic’ means more than just an investigative short cut. It didn’t achieve what I hoped, but here are my truncated efforts anyway:

Responses to the Public Protector’s Nkandla Report reveal much, but not enough

Responses to Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, ruling that President Jacob Zuma and his family directly benefited from the improper use of state funds in the (approximately R230m) upgrade to his (Jacob Zuma’s) Nkandla homestead and that he “failed to act in protection of state resources” are flooding in from all directions.

Obviously all the major opposition parties are using the report to attack the ANC and Zuma – and are generally deifying the Public Protector. However, the diverging responses from within the broad membership and leadership of the ruling African National Congress are the most relevant and interesting.

The party itself (and the SACP and the formal structures of the divided Cosatu) are essentially defending the President and/or attacking Madonsela (or the manner in which her report was delivered).

Several news media have attempted to list the number of ANC leaders and widely respected ‘liberation heroes’ who have in some way expressed both support for the integrity of the Public Protector and support for her findings. The list has included previous President Thabo Mbeki, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula (although her problems were primarily with the sexist language of some of the criticism … and up till now I have seen her as something of a Zuma loyalist, so I will have to do some homework on this one), ex-minister Pallo Jordan, ex-minister Ronnie Kasrils and a host of other individuals (e.g. Ben Turok and Marion Sparg) and particular branches of the party and parts of individual unions of trade union federation ally Cosatu which have in some way defended the Public Protector and supported her findings.

So what?

‘Nkandla’ is, on the face of it, small change compared to myriad similar scandals surrounding the President.[1] The difference in this case is a ‘Chapter 9 institution’ (an institution established in terms of Chapter 9 of the South African Constitution to “strengthen constitutional democracy in the Republic”) has made findings that essentially allege that Jacob Zuma has improperly benefited from state spending and that while there is no proof that he engineered this outcome, he had a responsibility, according to the Public Protector, to be aware that it was happening. These might be ugly, but not exactly impeachable offences – unless you believe they are purely the tip of a much larger iceberg hidden through luck, trickery and a good legal strategy.

There are so many issues that this raises, but I will mention only 3:

Firstly, does the ANC lose votes because of this? More precisely: does the release of the report just over a month before the election lose the ANC more votes than it would have lost anyway as a result of its president’s … how should I put this … now very widespread reputation for poor judgement with regard to his private financial affairs? I would guess ‘yes’.

I have no doubt that there are vast groups of voters who see Madonsela’s report as just another attack on their candidate and who will be completely unmoved by the details. I also suspect that there is a large group that despise the ANC leadership choices but will stick with the party in the belief that it will self-correct sometime soon. However, there are obviously those for whom Madonsela’s report is the proverbial straw – but I suspect this is a marginal group. If the margin is between 60% and 59% then Madonsela’s report could make an important difference. If it is between 63% and 64% then, voting wise on May 7, it is not going to make much difference.

Secondly, the ANC has benefited from occupying the high-ground of moral authority. Whatever its failings it was always the party of national liberation, the party of Nelson Mandela, the party that embodied the majority of black South Africans’ struggle for self-determination and against apartheid – unimpeachable and morally irresistibly aspirations and goals. The voices of disquiet from within the party are beginning to suggest that this objective or record has been redeployed in a baser struggle.

Listen carefully to the coded and heavily portentous words of Thabo Mbeki talking at the 20th anniversary of Wiphold at Sun City on March 22 2014:

“Regrettably, today, a mere 20 years after our liberation, it is obvious that many in our society have forgotten or are oblivious of the human cost our freedom entailed. Accordingly, these abuse the gift of our liberation to abuse our precious freedom to do things for themselves whose only objective is personal aggrandisement – thus to use their access to state, corporate and social power radically and systemically to subvert the required sustained and speedy advance we need towards the realisation of the objective of a better life for all our people.”

The Public Protector’s report is reverberating through the ANC (see key ANC intellectual and former cabinet minister Pallo Jordan’s column in the Business Day for another example) and forcing many of the ‘old guard’ to take a public stand. In almost all cases the criticism is unspecific and is being made by people who no longer occupy key positions in the party or state. However, there is a cumulative loss by those who hold central power in the ANC of moral authority. Without moral authority, hegemony must be won with patronage, manipulation, blackmail and force. The ANC is still close enough to its ‘liberation roots’ for such a changing of the guard to cause serious, even dramatic, ructions amongst the party faithful.

Finally, Jacob Zuma has been (significantly) responsible for growing ANC electoral support in Kwazulu-Natal from 33.33% in 1994 to 63.97% in 2009. The province has a population of 10 456 900 people (second to Gauteng which has 12 728 400 according to the 2011 census). Kwazulu-Natal is now a key ANC stronghold and the only province where the party’s electoral support grew during the 2011 municipal elections. More than a quarter of the party’s total membership comes from the province. “On Friday, thousands of ANC supporters wearing yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Hands off Zuma’ marched in Port Shepstone on the south coast … after eThekwini did so earlier this month” – (City Press 30/03/2014). If, as we suspect, Jacob Zuma’s lifestyle and probity issues are losing the ANC a degree of support in many, especially urban, areas of the country but that his personal support is continuing to grow amongst isiZulu speakers in rural Kwazulu-Natal, the party will face the further corroding influences of regionalisation and tribalism. My suspicion is Zuma’s vote pulling power in Kwazulu-Natal peaked in 2011, but only May 7 will put that to rest one way or another.

[1]Jacob Zuma’s financial advisor Shabir Shaik was sentenced to two 15 year terms in prison after he was found ‘guilty of corruption for paying Zuma 1.2 million Rand (US$185,000) to further their relationship and for soliciting a bribe from the French arms company Thomson-CSF, as well as guilty of fraud for writing off more than R1 million (US$154,000) of Zuma’s unpaid debts” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schabir_Shaik_trial accessed on 30/03/2014 at 21h17 CAT

I am on my way to London to speak to the funds that buy and sell South Africa’s corporate and government bonds i.e. the market that sets the price at which the world is prepared to lend us money.

Daily I become more convinced that the South African political economy is, like quick clay“so unstable that when a mass … is subjected to sufficient stress, the material behavior may transition from that of a particulate material to that of a fluid.”

The other metaphor I was fiddling with was: all the cards have been thrown in the air and where they will land, nobody knows. (I’m sure there is an elegant song or poem that says something like that, any help there would be appreciated … that request is the WordPress equivalent of a #twoogle – Ed)

But before I get onto the more lofty questions about the future of life, the universe and everything, I thought I would send you my latest news update – so you can see the gradually building case for my sense that everything has changed. (Thanks as always to BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities for generously allowing me to republish this – albeit a few days later – here.)

A new socialist party appears on the horizon of South African politics … it’s not all good news, but nor is it all bad

Murmurs about vote rigging – a leading indicator of political instability

Mining policy meets with surprising levels of push-back from the private sector – in the Business Day at least

The future push for the NDP, Hitachi and the ANC, final takes on the budget and why South African telecommunications infrastructure is a very fat golden goose

Numsa confirms it will launch socialist party

The biggest union in the country is effectively in the process of being expelled from the ANC- aligned Cosatu and has announced its intention to establish a party, provisionally to be called the United Front and Movement for Socialism.

He (Jim) continued on to argue that ‘leadership of the national liberation movement as a whole had failed to lead a consistent radical democratic process …’ (Jim paraphrased in numbing detail in SABC Online, Sunday, 2 March 2014, 17h49.)

Numsa has been given seven days (from last Thursday) by the Cosatu NEC to provide reasons why it should not be suspended from the federation. The main issues motivating the suspension are that Numsa has been openly critical of the ANC and the Cosatu leadership and that Numsa has begun competing with, especially, the National Union of Mineworkers, in defiance of Cosatu’ s one-industry-one-union slogan.

So what?

This is unfolding much as predicted. The ANC under Jacob Zuma has decided (or been compelled) to impose discipline on the ruling alliance and force a degree of compliance with the various policies of the ANC and its government. The discipline sought by the ruling group within the ANC is motivated by apparently divergent concerns. On the one hand, Jacob Zuma and his allies are attempting to get the left-wing to stop attacking them (Jacob Zuma and his allies) as corrupt and incompetent. On the other, Jacob Zuma and his allies are attempting to force a degree of support for the National Development Plan (NDP), a policy that the left-wing generally sees as ‘neo-liberal’, anti-poor, anti-working class and conservative in fiscal and monetary terms.

There is a fine tension here between positives and negatives (for the audience NB writes for … mainly fund-managers – Ed). The NDP has been widely welcomed in financial markets. But the corruption associated with the holding of high office in South Africa is becoming something of a crisis for investors of all stripes. It is as inaccurate to think of Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla faction as purely the champion of market friendly policy as it is to think that Irvin Jim, Zwelinzima Vavi and Numsa are purely the anti-corruption champions of South African politics.

For now, we need to watch for the formation of the socialist party, probably at or before the year-end. Such a party will have a multiplicity of impacts including (but not limited to) undercutting areas of ANC support and forcing the ANC towards finding policies that stimulate economic growth.

(By-the-way I feel it is likely that this new party will have more substance and longevity than the EFF and through a variety of possible mechanisms – including some kind of alliance or even amalgamation – could subsume much of the EFF support and intellectual leadership. But that sort of speculative concoction will follow this post some time over the next few days.)

UDM says beware of vote rigging

The Sunday Independent (2 March) reports that Bantu Holomisa of the United Democratic Movement claimed that ‘rogue elements’ in the Independent Electoral Commission will help rig the 7 May election to ‘facilitate the underperforming ANC’:

“The ANC is very concerned (about shedding votes), hence they are pinning their hopes that those rogue elements will run the elections, so rigging will be on the high. There is no doubt about that” – Bantu Holomisa in the Sunday Independent, 2 March 2014.

So what?

The effectiveness, reliability and constitutionality of the Independent Electoral Commission have been important guarantors of aspects of South African democracy. While Holomisa’s allegations are not substantiated (in the aforementioned interview), the fact that such allegations are made can be an important leading indicator of long-term political stability. People and political parties must trust the electoral system if they are to accept the outcome of elections.

(Holomisa’s ‘rogue elements’ probably refers to Pansy Tlakula, chairperson of the IEC, who was found last year by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela to be guilty of improper conduct and maladministration with regard to the R320 million lease contract for a new head office for the IEC. Tlakula is currently challenging Madonsela’s finding in courts. The IEC and the Public Protector are both institutions established in terms of Chapter 9 of the South African Constitution with specifies that they are designed to “strengthen constitutional democracy in the Republic” – Chapter 9 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.)

Mining policy pushback – in the Business Day anyway

Today’s Business Day leads with a story claiming that there are ‘growing rumblings’ from the mining industry about the ‘once empowered, always empowered’ equity provisions in the Mining Charter. The issue in this case is that the government will this year audit the mining companies’ requirement to be at least 26% black owned. Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye Gold, is threatening to go to court to have Sibanye’s empowerment transactions counted in the audit, even if the black beneficiaries have since sold out of their equity.

Mining companies are issued licences pursuant to them meeting certain criteria with regard to Black Economic Empowerment, employment, social, community and labour obligations.

So what?

The series of stories in the Business Day about this matter smacks a little of a campaign by the newspaper – nothing wrong with that but then consume them tentatively. The story is worth reading just to catch the tone and tenor of Neal Froneman – who sounds fed-up to the point of rebellion. Catch it here.

The article quotes Mike Schroder, a portfolio manager of Old Mutual’s gold fund, at a mining conference last year: “One cost that I can’t chart is BEE (black economic empowerment). It doesn’t affect the bottom line or the EPS (earnings per share) or PE (price:earnings) ratios, but every time a BEE deal is done, our pension funds, our provident funds, our unit trusts have to chip in.”

I expect these legislative interventions by the government to strengthen not weaken over time. It is my initial impression that part of the ANC’s answer to the populist incursions onto its territory by the EFF will be to significantly strengthen ‘transformation obligations’ on the private sector – and in return the government will back the private sector against the labour unions. I think these trends will become visible before the end of the year and will be accompanied by greater emphasis on the NDP and by the axing of the ANC’s left-wing elements. Thus, the ANC will attempt to reconfigure South African politics, basing itself more tightly on the emerging property-owning and middle classes than previously, and in a loose alliance with the private sector. This feeds into my ‘hoping for the best’ view of last week – although we should be cautious, because these complicated trade-offs will as likely end in tears as smiles.

Bits and Pieces

Last week, Helen Zille, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, became involved in an unseemly Twitter spat with City Press journalist Carien du Plessis. Actually, it was only Zille doing the spatting and (probably to Zille’s mortification) du Plessis wrote a calm and thoughtful defence of herself in the City Press on Sunday (2 March 2014). In the Twitter exchange, Zille essentially accuses du Plessis of apologising for being white (as far as I can make out). Zille is feisty and combative and there have been several ‘scandals’ around her phraseology and views. She definitely skirts the boundary of what is acceptable in the highly circumscribed and sensitive language of political debate in ‘post-apartheid South Africa’. Will this lose the DA any votes on 7 May? Will it gain the party any? I have no idea.

Business Day editor Peter Bruce’s Monday morning column, ‘The Cutting EdgeThe Thick Edge of the Wedge: The Political Basis for budgets (if he perchance comes to these lonely shores and find’s that error, I ask his forgiveness in advance) should be required reading for anyone interested in the speculative intersections between South African politics and economics. This morning, he claims that a normally reliable informant, someone “spectacularly close to the Presidency”, told him that Trevor Manuel will stay on in government as a super-minister in the Presidency in Zuma’s next administration, that other ‘left leaning ministers in the economics cluster’ (he probably means Ebrahim Patel in EDD and Rob Davies in DTI) will be shifted aside, that the ANC will hold its vote above 60% on 7 May, that the new administration will make “a big and forceful push after the elections to begin implementing the National Development Plan”, that the EFF and Numsa’s new party will not fly, and that Zuma will secure his safety from prosecution for fraud post his presidency by ensuring that his ex-wife and African Union President Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is his successor. (The argument in Peter Bruce’s article being: “She would not put the father of her children in jeopardy – which I don’t necessarily buy, but is interesting anyway). This view concurs quite closely with my view articulated last week that it appears, shorn of its ‘left’ and ‘right’ factions, the ANC will be obliged (and set free) to pursue vigorous economic growth if it is to win the 2019 election.

Hitachi has bought back the ANC stake (held by investment company Chancellor House) in Hitachi Power Africa as the shareholding constituted ‘a conflict of interest’. You don’t say. Hitachi Power Africa won R38.5 billion of contracts from Eskom for the Medupi and Kusile power plants. Nuff said.

The weekend press had a few ‘final takes’ on the budget. The two I found most interesting were Peter Bruce, in his aforementioned column, writing that it was “a budget of almost unsurpassable banality”, and Numsa’s Irwin Jim saying at his Johannesburg press conference on Saturday that the budget “more than anything else confirms the right-wing shift in the ANC/SACP government”. I won’t say anything.

Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko wrote a paid-for ‘open letter’ in the Sunday Times yesterday accusing MTN SA and Vodacom of acting against the public interest (of expanding access to and lowering costs of a ‘modern communications infrastructure’) by opposing lower termination rates. Maseko claims that Telkom had subsidised Vodacom and MTM to the tune of R50bn over two decades. Professor Alison Gillwald of Research ICT Africa was quoted in today’s Business Day (by the excellent Carol Paton) as saying “Telkom is right. MTN and Vodacom had an extraordinary termination rate asymmetry with Telkom over 20 years.” She went on to say that, during the period of asymmetry, the private companies rolled out “enormous infrastructure that has improved access.” Finally, she says: “While one wouldn’t want to kill the golden goose, she was a very fat goose” … which I thought was a good enough turn of phrase to deserve republication anywhere.

* That is deliberately missing an apostrophe – the ‘*’ makes you think it might be there and you are forced back and forward between the noun and verb meaning. (Get a life! – Ed.)

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I am an independent political analyst focusing on Southern Africa and I specialise in examining political and policy risks for financial markets.

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